Contrary to what you might think, given recent postings, I haven’t bought a new bike (yet). But I have bought a new car! (Or rather, I will have bought it when they’ve finished putting it through it’s MOT). It’s a 52 plate Mazda 6 TS 2.0 turbodiesel estate - a “big” car in garnet red for those who prefer that kind of description. And it will, by my reckoning, be Thorp family car number 7 in 8 years. So here’s a little retrospective:

• Fiat Uno - nice little car given to us when we got married that unfortunately got hit by a lorry while parking on Kelvin Way about 2/3 weeks later, writing it off
• Nissan Micra - lovely little runabout that did a lot of good service and, despite virtually dying a couple of times, managed to get sold on to a guy at work and got a:
• Toyota Corolla - Heather’s Granddads old car, and the only automatic I’ve ever driven. Died suddenly one morning - wouldn’t start, and the garage declared it DoA.
• Rover 100 Kensington- Little red metro, basically. But it had remote central locking Sold it on to a friend.
• Rover 420Si - Bought by Heather’s Dad at a car auction and sold on to us. Probably my favourite car so far - big, powerful car that was nice to drive, with lots of electric doodads. PITA to park though. Sadly it failed it’s MOT shortly after Rover died, and the parts were not on the horizon for a good long time. Traded it in for:
• Renault Megane 1.4e - Done a reasonable job, but felt like a step down from the Rover for me. Getting a reasonable trade in value for:
• Mazda 6 2.0TD TS

Sadly the pick up has been delayed while they await a part, but hoping to have it by the weekend

mrBen

Well - the first 2 days of this week have been marred by chronic (and potentially expensive) forgetfulness viz

1. When cycling to the station on Monday, I forgot to zip up one of my jacket pockets. This became blinding obvious at the point when my mobile phone fell out and bounced along the road behind me. Luckily, other than some nasty chips in the plastics, it all seems to be working
2. Also on Monday, I got halfway through Finnieston when I realised I had forgotten my cycle lock. Which meant I had to cycle home and take the car to work instead.
3. I managed to leave my (1 month old) cycle helmet on the train when I got off at work yesterday. Sadly, it does not appear to be possible to get telephone numbers for train stations, and the lost property number is an answerphone for the central lost property for Scotland, in Queen Street, rather than the lost property office in Central. So far, it has not been returned, which could set me back £25 for a new one

So - not a good start to the week. Here’s hoping that, after Liverpool’s record-breaking 8-0 win last night, things are looking up.

mrBen