Ipswich at QPR
Last night was the first time this season, that I’d seen Ipswich win. I must admit I was there when they beat Coventry, but I left immediately Coventry equalised, so didn’t actually see the win. I was also at Shrewsbury, when they won in the Carling Cup, but that was on penalties.
I’d never been to Loftus Road before, but I certainly enjoyed the visit. It is a compact ground with good views tucked away behind Shepherd’s Bush. I think though now that the crowd are better behaved than they were years ago, when someone chucked a dummy hand grenade being the opposing goalkeeper. Apparently, he ran very fast.
But as supposedly one of the richest clubs in England, if not the world, the ungrateful crowd really didn’t appreciate the match, giving Flavio Briatore some typical football humour. I’ve just read Briatore’s bio on Wikipedia. I can’t be all true! Can it? Wikipedia doesn’t always get it right.
Note in the pictures, one shows the immaculate minute’s silence for someone who did a lot for QPR.
Toy Oh Dear
Toyota has a few problems. Not only do accelerators stick on some models, but now the Prius has a brake problem.
These may be serious and they are probably hurting Toyota’s image and the company will suffer for years to come.
The problems are very different. The accelerator is a mechanical design fault and the brake is a software one. But if you have the first, here is excellent advice from the BBC. I know you’ll be unlikely to be able to access this advice if you have a problem, but make sure that you read it.
The trouble is that we assume are cars are perfect, the roads are perfect, the weather is always fine and nothing untoward will ever happen as we drive along in our cars listening to the Beatles, smoking fags and eating sandwiches. I don’t do the last two as I abhor smoking and can’t eat bread, unless I make the gluten-free variety myself, but I hope you get the point.
We must have more driver education to make the roads safer and dare I say it allow everybody to enjoy driving more. It’s a great pleasure to drive a car fast and legally down a challenging and empty road.
I have two cars; a Lotus Elan and a Jaguar X-Type Estate.
The Lotus is simple with no-ABS, no-traction control, no-air conditioning and very little electronics to go wrong. It incidentally has a full electronic control system on the lump that does the work under the bonnet. The Jaguar has all these, but other than body styles, the two cars are both manual gearboxes, front-wheel drive, full leather etc.
Now when it comes to bad roads, the Elan is in a class of its own compared to the Jag. The ABS and traction control cuts in on the latter and makes things more rather difficult rather than easier.
So is one of the problems of modern cars, that they have just got too complicated, too heavy and we isolate the driver too much from the road?
I know that on bad days, I take the Lotus and enjoy that drive. Perhaps, if we all learned to enjoy driving, we’d do it better and have less accidents and breakdowns.
The Anonymous Widower 