Vroom Vroom

 I have long said I would drive my 5 series into the ground and not be too concerned how the body work looked. It has done 125000 miles and seemed good for the same again. Then things took a turn. The air con packed up and needed a new compressor. The boot lid would not respond to the key any more which was indicative of a loom problem and finally the car started losing power under pressure. A best that was an exhaust fault and at worst could be a gasket or interventions failure.

My recent experience with Williams in Liverpool  as documented here, did not fill me with confidence so it has become time to trade in and move on.

I decided to use the used car department of the Chester dealership, Hallowell Jones, and see what they could offer. We had met Mr Jones at St Andrews last year so I felt a bit of empathy there.

As thing worked out there was a vehicle in stock which fitted my requirements at a reasonable price. So it is now sitting on the drive and I am a boy racer!!

It is taking some getting used to. It is the first automatic I have owned and the interior packages have moved on a way since I was in the market eleven years ago.  Front and rear cameras are there to help and I have an app on the phone from which I can lock or unlock the car and track it if it goes missing!

So at least there is something more suitable now sitting in the Captain parking space at the golf club.

There's a clue in the name

 The BBC Sports Personality of the Year has always been a must watch Christmas event in our household. I will admit that as the Beeb have less and less live sport to show it has become a bit less enjoyable than it used to be, but there has usually been a good list of candidates for the big prize. We will just ignore the fact that Ryan Giggs managed to win it one year. That's a bit like Danny Willett winning the Masters!!

There always used to be silly sports challenges which audience members would participate in even if they were not up for the grand prize, but those little off piste diversions seem to have disappeared too.

This year, though, we are in a very strange place. as has become the trend, the six major prize winners have been announced beforehand and I am now doubting whether I really wish to watch it, particularly as Lewis Hamilton, the contestant with the least personality, is favourite to win it. I am not sure though whether Stuart Broad or Ronnie O'Sullivan might run him close in a grey man competition, unless that is, Keir Starmer is in the running.

OK,  Lewis is world champion for the 'n'th time in a minority sport which is boring and monotonous to a large part of the population and, yes, I know golf is probably tarred with the same brush, but if he is best of a bad bunch I really despair.

Tyson Fury must agree with me as he has withdrawn his name from the competition, although whether the BBC have noticed I am not sure.

Joe Wicks read out the nominations, he must have been thinking that he had done more this year to win it than the nominee's themselves. And what about Major Tom, He has scooped up most of the awards this year, walking round the garden must have counted as an endurance event as far as he was concerned? Jordan Henderson  will get the Northern Powerhouse vote, but I would like to see Hollie Doyle win, as she has the profile and  all the current attributes of a 2020 success story, just don't get me onto the 'Lewis Hamilton for a Knighthood' campaign

Neeeoooow!

In a land far, far away

FLOW  came home with a packet of Christmas themed face masks yesterday, and it go me wondering which ten items I would put in a 2020 time capsule  for discovery by aliens in 100 years time. So, in no particular order, with some personal and some pandemic wide:

• Christmas themed face mask
• Deliveroo backpack
• Ventilator
• Zoom user guide
• COVID test kit
• Ordnance Survey map of Wirral
• Golf Ball
• Hands, Face, Space publicity poster
• Home schooling guide
• Bat soup recipe

 That should keep them busy trying to work out what on Earth happened all those years ago.

We just need to ensure that the 2021 capsule includes a vaccine phial  and a plane ticket to a sunny destination, fingers crossed.

 

 

Viewers and watchers

 The second round of lockdown is quite interesting here on the Wirral. At the beginning of October we had over 300 cases per 100,000 when the average in England was 23. We entered stage 3 with the rest of the City of Liverpool conurbation where the figure was almost 600 in parts, and at least enjoyed golf and having a beer, albeit one to a table.

Boris then saw fit to introduce the national lockdown but sweetened the pill in Liverpool by using the City to dry run the mass testing initative. It has been restricted to just the Liverpool City Centre but their figure has halved to less than 300 cases now, and Wirral is down to about 180. The National average is now over 200. Quite what will happen in a couple of weeks is anybody's guess but at least we can see some progress 'Op North'. If that means we can return to stage 3 and some people can get out and about more easily, then all well and good.

My golf is now restricted to the back garden ( don't you mean front garden...ed) and I was having a thrash with my SkyTrak when I became aware that Stewart Golf have launched a new remote controlled golf buggy. Bit on the pricey side I thought but on examining my SkyTrak usage I noticed that while I was playing golf I was less inclined to use the simulator so it was sitting there doing nothing for most of the time. When I got it for lockdown 1, I convinced myself that I would sell it on afterwards as they seem to keep thier value pretty well. 

So it was a matter of selling one to buy the other and research showed me that the Sky Trak  factory has sold out and there are no new orders until January, E-Bay here I come.

First basic error I made was not waiting until a special Black Friday selling offer was announced by E-Bay, but that turned out not to be too much of a problem as bids flew at me from all sides, most of which were to buy before the auction finished. I don't tend to do that, and with over 1000 people viewing and over 100 watching,  letting the auction run it's course was the honourable thing to do. All people have their price though, and when somebody made me a very generous offer and said they would pick it up next day, I weakened and closed the deal.

So, Mr Stewart Golf is coming to Wallasey next month subject to lockdown being lifted and I get a personal demo of their new machine. If it fits the bill and copes with Wallasey's lunar landscape then it will be utilised much more than the SkyTrak, and in the months ahead, who knows, the SkyTrak market may depress and I can buy another one.

So a bit of wheeler dealing even Del Boy would have been proud of. Cushty Cushty Rodders.

Kill the witch

When I was working, I travelled a fair bit in the car. Simon Mayo Drivetime was a go to radio show to listen to on the way home. I remember he had a three word Friday phone in, curry for tea, lawn to cut, beers to drink and so on. It is interesting that American politics under Donald Trump  has adopted a similar parlance.

If you cast your minds back to 2016, he had a right old go at Hillary Clinton, her e-mail usage and tax disposition. The chat was there almost immediately, Lock Her Up, Lock Her Up. When Trump was likely to be up before Congress and be impeached we heard Kill the Bill, Kill the Bill although that was also associated with efforts to overturn Obamacare. 

When  Ruth Bader Ginsburg sadly died, there was a debate about whether the incumbent President should replace her or wait until after the election. Fill the Seat, Fill the Seat cried all the Republicans. Now in the midst of one of the nastiest Presidential campaigns ever we are hearing the fairly standard Four More Years, Four More Years chants at most Trump rallies, but as he looks to project himself as a tin pot African state  dictator akin to Idi Amin or  Robert Mugabe we hear chants of Stop the Count, Stop the Count.

Not to be outdone the Democrats counter with Finish the Count but it is a syllable too long to really resonate like the Republicans.. I am sure they will come up with something once Joe has crossed the line though, USA, USA, USA seems to be quite a popular one.    

Conspiracy theory

 Well we are in lockdown II and already the moaning has started. We here on Wirral have been doing all we could during stage 3 restrictions and that had seen infections reduce from just over 300 cases per 100,000 to just below 250, tha'ts a good 16% improvement. That effort has been mirrored across the Liverpool City Region and may be why Liverpool has been offered the opportunity to be the first City to have whole population testing. As I type, 2000 army personnel are arriving to co-ordinate the task.

Rather impishly, and to spark some motivation for people to take a test I suggested successful roll-out would allow Everton FC and Liverpool FC to be playing home games in front of crowds before many of their competitors. I thought that might be a high value gain for people in this football mad City, but how wrong was I?

You see, it's all a conspiracy as far as the 'in the street' scouser is concerned. 'They just want all our DNA, mate' is the line people will feed you' Matches us to crime scene's then, dunnit'. How sad a view people hold on a process which could see them return to normality in time for Christmas.

If you have nothing to hide, why woirry? So let's see what the take-up is and hope that this pioneering initiative supported by Mayor Anderson, does provide the light at the end of the tunnel. That would be the best Christmas present for all of us! 

Even the steering wheel is extra

Regular readers of the blog will be aware that I have a lot to thank BMW for. I have been a BMW driver for probably twenty five years and through their owners club golf links I have achieved many wonderful things. I won the owners club trophy at Turnberry , I qualified for the British final of the BMW World Cup at St Andrew's and I played Wentworth many times the week after the BMW Championships. I also had access to many top flight courses around the UK, not least Hillside, Walton Heath and St Georges Hill. Add in holiday golf in Morocco and Turkey and it's a good portfolio of add-ons.

The icing on the cake though was the opportunity to play in the pro-am tournament before the BMW Championship in Chicago, which at the time was at Cog Hill and formed part of the Fedex Cup finals. I played with Lucas Glover, the US Open Champion of the time, and we followed Tiger Woods and the Mr BMW fourball round the course.

It hurts me. therefore, to share my disappointment at the way the main dealer experience seems to have been degraded and is now no longer the go to service outlet it should be. I gave Williams BMW in Liverpool one last try this week, as my car has done 125000 miles and I thought there might be some parts which may be replaced as routine. The engine also had a bit of a growl which could have done to be looked at.

In the past I have been attended to by a receptionist who was maybe a mechanic who had worked up to the office/PR team. or somebody who was a bit of a petrolhead and at least would know what I was trying to describe as I booked the vehicle in. Sadly now the person I was faced with had no idea about anything other than what the script said, and was more interested in telling me how much the investigation would cost rather than having any empathy with me. 

I picked the car up two days later and I suspect the growl was cured with a component change as part of the routine service, but I will never know. Luckily they only replaced the windscreen wipers and not the windscreen as I had been assured was what I had booked it in for. I will look for an independent next time and hopefully they can keep it running for another 125000 miles.

If the growl was an exhaust problem I was quoted £3200 for a new system. E-bay indicated to me I might be lucky to get that if I sold the car!!