Easy Rider

OK, so I’ve kind of got over the issue with Barclays. I just couldn’t believe the fucking gall of them – charging me £8 for an error that they were solely to blame for. Jeez. But that’s done now...well, until they try to take the charge at the end of the month, even though I’ve been assured they won’t. We’ll see...and I’ll report back. Roll on next month so I can change banks. I saw something on BBC 1’s The One Show the other day that was fairly interesting – it was an item about switching bank accounts and how easy it’s actually meant to be. Again – we’ll see.

But onwards – today I want to talk about my transportation issues. When I knew I was taking a pay cut, I decided that owning a car in this financial climate was a bit of a waste of money. You only have to look at the price of petrol these days to see that: £1.32 is about the average price of a litre of unleaded where I now live, and if you ask me, it’s still ridiculous even though most people have pretty much conceded that it’s not going to change (or go down, at the very least) any time soon. So, as I said two posts ago, I sold the trusty Proton to my dad and embarked on a mission to get myself on the road via an altogether more cost effective means: a motorbike.

I booked myself onto a CBT (compulsory basic training) course in January, and it was basically just riding around some cones in a closed car park, followed by a bit of on-road tuition. It’s fairly straightforward for someone who’s got previous riding experience as I have, but I can imagine it’s a bit daunting riding a motorbike through traffic if you’ve never done it before – especially when you’ve got to wrestle with the actual operation of the machine and also have your wits about you with regard to road safety and other (usually extremely ignorant) road users (read: twats in cars). After I passed my CBT, I got myself a little 125cc 4 stroke – a Sinnis Max 2 – and found it to be an extremely capable and reliable machine. If you’re thinking about getting a motorbike and only have a CBT to ride with (meaning you have to use L-plates and can only have a 125, for those not familiar with biking stuff), then the Sinnis bikes are a really good place to start. True, they’re manufactured in China, and most ‘bike snobs’ will baulk at this, but to be fair Sinnis are a British company based in Brighton and their bikes seem to be of a quality a few steps higher than most other Chinese-manufactured bikes.

Sinnis Max 2: Not your average Chinese-built bike.

So I had my Sinnis Max, and I was quite happy with its low maintenance, 90mpg fuel economy and £100 per year insurance premium. Added to £15 road tax and no MOT costs due to its age, and I was onto a money-saving winner. Then I got offered my new job. It was 30 miles away. I tried out the journey using an A road, and it took me just over an hour to get there from where I was living. Hmmm. Not the best commute time. I factored in rush-hour traffic and computed that using my Sinnis, with its 60-65mph top speed, it’d probably take me an hour and a half to get to work every day (and the same going home): that’s 3 hours in the saddle every day. 15 HOURS A WEEK. Quite simply: No.

I had an alternative – the motorway. The motorway runs alongside this particular stretch of A Road, but due to my bike being a 125 I wouldn’t even bother and besides, being only a CBT holder I wasn’t allowed to ride on the motorway anyway. So I took the decision to attempt to get my full license. Step 1 involved me completing the third theory/hazard perception test I’ve done in my time (after the car and HGV ones I’ve done previously) and I passed it with 100% on both parts (yes – I’m boasting). Once that minor inconvenience was out of the way, I progressed to training for my MOD 1 test, which is basically doing some slow/controlled manoeuvres on a bike while an examiner watches you.I did a couple of day’s training with a local riding school and went for my test on the Monday.

I’ll be honest – I was absolutely shitting myself. My fucking legs were shaking when I started the test, but I found this actually helped when I was doing the ‘figure of 8’ as my whole body was really tense so I was able to maintain complete control of my bike (weird, eh?!). The same couldn’t be said for the ‘swerve test,’ in which you have to gun it down a straight, swerve to avoid a cone, and then come to a controlled stop in a box marked out by other cones. I skidded and fucking failed. I was understandably gutted as it was the last manoeuvre and the ride home afterwards was horrific – especially when the other people who I’d gone to do the test with all passed! Determined not to give up, I booked myself onto another test on the Friday via the driving tests website, rode the 100-odd miles to the test centre on my own...and fucking nailed it. Bosh. On to MOD 2...this was the biggie: a proper test where you ride around on open roads with an examiner. I won’t bore you with the details, but I had to travel to Taunton in Somerset to do it and after a very nervous, sweaty morning waiting at the test centre, I went out with the examiner and passed first time with no minors. Fuck. Yeah.

This whole process (from CBT to full license) took about 3 months (CBT in January, test passed in early March), and even though there were several sleepless nights and outbursts of extreme annoyance at myself (mainly upon failure of my first MOD 1 test!), it was totally worth it. Granted, my license is a restricted one due to the fact that I took my tests on my Sinnis Max (I’m limited to bikes of 33 bhp for 2 years, after which I can ride anything I want), but now I have a Honda CBF 250 which whilst not the fastest machine on the planet, still cranks out 90mph at a push and is totally comfortable either on the motorway or in city-centre riding. So that’s the state of play. In little over 3 months I went from staunch car-driver to motorcyclist and my pockets have reaped the rewards. It costs me about £14 to fill my tank up to the brim, road tax is £36 a year and the insurance is about £120 a year.

Honda CBF 250. Not fast, but reliable.

It sucks slightly at the moment because of the incessant rain (cheers, British summer), and the number of locks and chains I have to wrap around my bike to keep it safe is bordering on the neurotic...but better be safe than sorry in Cameron’s broken, rainy, recession-dogged Britain, right?!

One thing I have become acutely aware of since I’ve been motorcycling though, is car drivers’ complete lack of awareness in the main. As I alluded to earlier, I have a car and a HGV license, and have a good deal of experience on the roads so I’m not saying this as a biased motorcycling noob – but goddamn there are some inconsiderate and downright stupid people populating the roads of Britain. Being on a motorbike means that you have to have a slightly heightened awareness of what’s going on around you due to the exposure you have, but I’ve never experienced rudeness from other motorists on quite such a high level as I do now while on the bike. It’s true that some motorcyclists ride like nutters, cut though traffic and are generally a menace, but sensible riders like me seem to be tarred with the same brush...so as a side effect I’m constantly being cut up, tailgated by Audis (that’ll never change – Audi drivers are born as cunts), and generally just aggravated by other people’s complete lack of regard for safety on the road. But that’s another story.


If my tale of ditching four wheels for two has inspired you, then go for it. The feeling of freedom whilst on a motorbike is unlike anything you’ll ever experience in a car, trust me. Plus if you're like me and enjoy messing about with engines and stuff, being a motorcyclist means you'll be forever getting your hands dirty fixing stuff when it goes wrong. This is a GOOD thing!

Feel free to ask me any questions and I’ll try to answer them from my own experiences.

Premier Disservice

My next post was going to be about getting rid of my car and getting on two wheels (that’s a motorbike, by the way), but first I feel I need to vent my frustration. Frustration with Barclays Bank. Now, fuck all the shit in the news with them fixing prices or whatever it is, and fuck all that stuff about the Chief Exec resigning and lining his pockets on the way out the door. I want to go all the way down the ladder to the bottom of the pile, where people like me reside. The greasy little people who live in bins and just happen to have an account with them. Hello.

Right – here we go. A few weeks ago I was in Sainsbury’s getting some shopping. A few tins of beans, some bread, apples etc – the usual. I also nipped in to the petrol station on the way out to fill my motorbike up. When I got to the cashier, and handed over my debit card (which worked fine 5 minutes earlier in the main store), I was told it had been declined. The cashier tried it again and was confronted with a message on the till to call merchant services. She did, and after what seemed like an age being on hold, she finally got through to an operator who requested to speak to me. I was told that my card had been declined for ‘fraud prevention’ reasons, and that I needed to answer some security questions, the first of which I couldn’t answer (the incredible exchange went like this: Operator - “what is your home phone number?” Me - “I don’t have one” Operator - “I’m afraid that’s incorrect”). Eventually, I answered the questions thrust upon me like I was in some kind of real-world version of Shenmue, and my card was accepted and I went on my way (after apologising profusely to the queue of people building up behind me in the petrol station, that is).

The next morning, I checked my bank balance online to see if my rent standing order had gone to my landlord, only to be confronted with a message that my account had been suspended due to a fraud investigation! I rang the bank and spoke to somebody in the fraud department and got my account unlocked (apparently, buying motorbike forks and Dreamcast games on eBay flags up fraud activity with Barclays), but I noticed that because of this overnight block (that I thought had been sorted over the phone in the petrol station the previous evening) my rent hadn’t been paid. Cue another call to Barclays, where I was told that the standing order to my landlord 'couldn’t be found,' so I’d have to set up another – which I did. Now, fast forward to the beginning of this month. I check my balance to see if my rent has been paid – it hasn’t. I ring the bank. Again. They tell me it’s been sorted, but low and behold – another issue arises. The next day, I get a letter from Barclays telling me that I had insufficient funds for my rent standing order and that they’re charging me £8 for the pleasure! I check my online banking thingy and discover that they’ve assigned one rent standing order to a side account I never use, and another to my main account. HOW FREAKING INCOMPETENT CAN YOU GET?! So after another bout of phonecalls and explaining the situation to about 10 different customer services idiots (and, fingers crossed, resolving the issue), I think I’ve decided that I’m going to change banks.

You may think this is an overreaction, but in the weeks between these two incidents, I tried to change my account from a £25 a month ‘Premier’ one to an £8 a month ‘Travel’ account, and was then subsequently placed on the wrong scheme so ended up paying an extra £15 for an account I never asked for. And this is how they treat ‘Premier’ customers with various savings accounts and a fully paid-off loan to their credit. I’d hate to be, y’know, someone who just has a ‘normal’ free account. Jesus. Talk about rubbing your customers up the wrong way – here I was thinking I was ‘always right.’ Pfft. Anyway, the point of this uber-rant is that I wanted to get my tale out to the wider world (yes, I know nobody reads this), for my own peace of mind. I’ve got an appointment at another bank today, so hopefully switching my accounts should be done by the end of the month.

Back From The Dead. Almost.

It’s been about a year since I last updated this thing, so I thought I’d have a go and attempting to fill the void with a bit of writing. That no one will read. Anyway, it’s now July 2012. It’s raining outside, and has been for the past two months almost incessantly. I really don’t think the sun is going to be shining any time soon either and this just about sums up the national mood here in England. Everywhere you go, all you see are miserable or angry faces. People snarling from behind steering wheels in gridlocked traffic or moaning in hairdressers about how hard done by they are. Usually before paying for their blow dry with their state-funded benefit money. Makes me pretty sick to be honest.

I suppose the faux joy of both the Jubilee weekend (i.e. a massive piss-up) and the brief run of England in the Euros has now faded, and the grey clouds of normality have once again gathered.

Interlude.

So what’s been happening since August 2011? Well, the biggest thing is that I’m no longer in the Royal Navy! I’m a free civilian who can do what he likes, grow a beard, dye his hair (not that I have), have his own political views and read the newspaper he wants without being subject to abuse (yes, still The ‘i’). I applied for voluntary redundancy last year, and I got it because very few of my contemporaries wanted it. The fear of leaving the secure bosom of the MOD’s payroll department obviously outweighed the basic human right of free will for most of them. Not that I didn’t leave without having my pocket lined by said government department, but that’s another story (and one that will be instrumental in the development of my future plans, which incidentally tie in to what I was saying in the introduction to this diatribe).

While I was in the process of regaining my freedom and dignity, I applied for several jobs and whenever news of my failure to secure one of these positions got back to my ‘workmates,’ the ensuing delight that they took in taking the piss bordered on the shocking. “There’s nothing out there mate,” was the usual advice, often followed by laughter and mocking. Unfortunately for those pathetic amoebas, I did secure employment in a field that is of great interest to me, and also allowed me to leave that godforsaken airbase and general locality behind. I now find myself in a working environment that is occupied by people who can string together a sentence and formulate a topic of conversation that doesn’t solely focus on tits or football or a combination of the two in paper form: aka The Sun newspaper. Furthermore, the workload is actually interesting (heritage sector), so I find myself discovering historical oddities and curious tales all the time. Right up my street, I tell thee. So that’s the state of play with regard to my working life.

To be fair, I still see a few of my actual friends from the navy on a regular basis and they constantly remind me what I’m missing by getting out when I did: fuck all.

 I did take a fairly heft pay cut when I decided to get out of the military, and one of the side effects of this was the decision to ditch my car. The Proton, whilst a great car, just had to go – especially with the cost of petrol seemingly increasing almost daily. As a side note, I recall that at sometime in February, I was running a certain route about four times a week. This route took me past a petrol station, and every time I went past the price of a litre of fuel had gone up by 1p. Every single time! Shocking. So I flogged the motor to my dad and took the plunge: I embarked on a mission to get my full motorbike license.

Next post: my adventures on two wheels. Hopefully it won’t take me a year to write it.

mp3G

Whenever I try to ring anyone on my mobile, I find myself having to dangle by my feet out of the fucking window in order to get a signal. Either that, or go outside so the GoldenEye satellite can get a fix on me and triangulate my Nokia. And that, my friends, is because the mobile phone network in this country is utter dogshit. You may recall that a few weeks ago I was spunking all over my new 'non O2' network Giffgaff, and waxing about how good it was. And to be honest, my opinion hasn't changed. It's outstanding value for money. The only downside is that it still runs on the O2 network...a network that, in all honesty, is about as reliable as an Alfa Romeo without an engine. So, you can imagine my interest when the BBC released a network map of the UK that details the coverage of the 3G signal.

Where I currently reside (and in the vast majority of rural locales I find myself in), you can count yourself lucky if you can get two bars of 2G signal, let alone 3G so all these people with smart phones and other devices that rely on a high-capacity data connection in order to function - forget it. And yet the major networks are all getting giddy about the impending 4G standard that should start rolling out in the next few years.

Now, I'm by no means a telecommunications expert, but here's an idea O2, T Mobile, Vodafone and the rest of you cunts: how about sorting out the 3G coverage before you start looking at moving to 4G? Just an idea. Oh, and while you're at it, how about extending it beyond the boundaries of London? How fucking brazen can you get: I was listening to Talksport the other day - a national radio station - and I heard an advert for Vodafone that was boasting about how good their signal was in London. London! Fucking great! What about the rest of the country you douchebags?! I realise that a lot of people who reside in our nation's capital are probably oblivious to the fact, but there are other places that exist outside of the boundary of London y'know. Sheesh.

But I'm digressing. The crux of what I'm bitching about is this: what's the point of trying to improve the data capacity of the mobile network in this country if the current one is still a pile of festering arse? Surely it'd be cheaper and more useful to improve the 3G coverage as more people currently own compatible handsets. The mind, my friends, boggles.

Other news: Steve Jobs has finally stepped down as the head honcho at the world's most pretentious company. Thinking of sending him a farewell card with a note asking for the reimbursement of the money I wasted on multimple iPods over the years before I realised they were SHIT and stopped buying them. As I've mentioned here in thepast, I've cracked my way through several iPods in my time simply because they stop working for various reasons. Batteries stop holding a charge, chargers break, buttons stop working...I could go on. Anyway, on the subject of mp3 players, my last one (a Phillips GoGear Vibe) died earlier this week and so I needed a replacement to use while running. I headed to Tesco and found this thing for a mere £9.50:

Yes, it looks like something Miley Cyrus might shit out, but I'm quite impressed with it. It's a Samsung Tictoc, and it's clearly aimed at teenage girls, but I'm open-minded. And tight as fuck too, so the £9.50 price-tag was a deal-breaker for me. It's quite an odd contraption - there's only one button but it takes on multiple functions depending on how you orientate the device. Press the button while it's facing upwards and it increases the volume, press it while it's facing the floor and the volume decreases. Press the button while holding the thing horizontally and it skips tracks etc etc etc. It's a bit like a Wii, but in mp3 form. Without a shit-load of rubbish games. Or the layer of dust as it sits under the TV unused since the last strained dinner party with your wife's work friends. Or the stench of the death of Nintendo as a proper games company wafting through the room.

I'm digressing again. So I'll stop.

Fun with Dorset Naga

Remember how I went to that chilli festival a few weeks back? Well, here's a video of me stupidly sampling one of the Dorset Nagas I bought there. At work. Not recommended:

The moral of the story is this: Do not eat a Dorset Naga. Especially when it's bright red and emits a low humming sound.

Incidentally, after the events shown in the vid I found myself experiencing severe nausea and stomach pain, so wound up back in the toilets chucking up my guts to get rid of the remnants of the chilli that I must've swallowed. I never thought that a chilli could deliver such a powerful kick, but I've been proven wrong in spectacular fashion.

FAIL.

Chillax. Do You See?

There's a couple of things I want to talk about today. Or should that be 'blog' about? I don't really like using that word, even though this is essentially a 'blog,' simply because it sounds so disgustingly middle class. Its the kind of word an angsty teenager uses when they're ranting online about how misunderstood they are and how much they hate their parents. Whilst sat in a bedroom housed in the west wing of a small mansion, typing on brand new Macbook Air that daddy bought them a month ago to apologise for not coming to their sixth-form production of Romeo & Juliet (with a modern emo twist). What hypothetical spoilt little cunts these teenagers are, eh? Gah.

So. Item the first: Pepsi Max. I love Pepsi Max. It is, without a doubt, my fizzy beverage of choice. I don't drink normal Pepsi (or Coke for that matter) simply because it contains the equivalent of 24 bags of sugar per 100ml (or something similar), and I know that Pepsi Max is probably no better for the human soul...but it's sugar free. And that's why I choose it over normal Pepsi. Now, the reason I bring up Pepsi Max is this: why is it so fucking hard to find it in 330ml cans?! You can buy it in most newsagents and corner shops in those massive 600ml bottles that recently appeared, but what if you don't want that much? And what if you prefer it from a can because it always seems colder and fizzier from a can? I walked around town the other day searching high and low for a shop that sold Pepsi Max in a can, but could I find one? Could I bollocks. Every shop had Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero in cans AND bottles (and some even had that pointless creation Diet Caffeine Free Coke, the cola equivalent of a nicotine-free cigarette), but not a single one stocked cans of Pepsi Max. Why is this? Is Coca Cola secretly paying Britain's corner shop owners a fee not to stock it's rival's drinks? After visiting five different corner shops (and a supermarket) and still drawing a blank, I'm inclined to question whether there is some kind of Coca Cola-powered conspiracy afoot. Just like when they ordered the assassination of JFK. To that end, I'm currently in the process of writing to Pepsi Co. to ask whether they're aware of the horrifying situation faced by Pepsi Max loving can-fans. More on this subject to follow.

Item the two: I attended the Great Dorset Chilli Festival over the weekend. It was more like a big market than a festival to be honest, but it was still quite good. As the name suggests, it was devoted to our friend the chilli. The vast majority of the stalls there were being run by local chilli farmers and they all had free samples available to punters who were brave/stupid enough to try their wares. The first thing I and my girlfriend did was head to the 'tasting' tent where we were presented with a vast array of chilli sauces ranging from 'mild' to 'hot,' and encouraged to taste them all and vote for the most flavoursome. The term 'flavoursome' stopped having any meaning after I got halfway through the 'medium' selection of sauces though, as they all tasted like fire and I couldn't tell what I was eating due to the tears blurring my vision. To my credit, I did make it around the whole lot and by the end of the ordeal my tongue felt as if it had taken the full brunt of the Tunguska blast; but it felt strangely satisfying to have tested them all - even the stuff that looked like a grizzly bear had devoured Satan's spice rack and then taken a shit in a bowl. Attempting to douse the inferno ripping it's way toward my sphincter with a pint of chilli & ginger-flavoured real ale probably wasn't the most intelligent thing I could have done at that point, but I forged on regardless.

As you would expect, I also made a few purchases. The first thing was a little jar of 'chocolate chilli curd,' which for all intents and purposes is Nutella with a few bits of chilli in it. Actually a lot tastier than it sounds, especially on hot toast. The second thing I bought was a little bag of Dorset Naga chillies. For those who don't know, the Dorset Naga is consistently rated as the world's hottest chilli. I haven't actually tasted one yet, but there's still time before they shrivel up like tiny green penises and die. The last thing I bought was what I like to call The Motherload. Its a bottle of hot chilli sauce the likes of which I have never come across in all my days of loving hot food. It's called '10 Minute Burn' (see picture below) and features the tag line 'Another bottle of pure pain.' The most accurate description of a foodstuff yet? Possibly. This stuff is horrifyingly spicy - three drops in the curry I made last night was enough to almost send the whole lot in the bin, even though it clearly states on the label 'do not ingest directly - use only in cooking.' Cooking what, exactly? A fucking isotope pie? So yeah - it's hot. Stupifyingly hot. I can't think of any more stupid metaphors to describe how hot it is, so just take my word for it.

Note the skulls. They are relevant in this case.

And now that you've read all that, have another look at this post's title. Do you see? Eh?! Chilli. Pepsi Max.

I'll get my coat.

Cakes

Did another half marathon last Sunday. It was the Sturminster Newton half marathon, more affectionatley known as the 'Stur Half,' and I must say that it was a really good event. My previous half marathon was the Plymouth one, and whilst the Stur Half was on a much, much smaller scale it was every bit as well organised. In case you give a toss, I finished in 50th place, which I don't think is too bad considering over 400 runners took part and I started quite a way back from the starting line. I'm not sure how the organisers got their timings, as the Stur Half didn't employ a chip timing system like Plymouth did, but I'm happy with my 01:31:09. Slightly dissapointed that they didn't award medals to all finishers, but I suppose that as it was only a small, locally run event I shouldn't complain too much (and I did get a free cake and t-shirt on completion).

The next race in my less-that-hectic schedule is the Bristol half marathon in September and I'm also considering the New Forest one later in the same month, but the only thing that concerns me about that one is that you aren't allowed to wear headphones/listen to music as you run. This is a bit of a problem for me, as music blasting through my lug holes is one of the only things that motivates me when I run. Have you ever tried running or jogging without music? It can only be described as horrendous - the only sound the desperate rasping of your own laboured breathing broken by the occasional clearing of the throat...it makes a pretty unpleasent activity even more unbearable. To that end, I'm not sure if I'm going to enter the New Forest one. I suspect I'm not the only person who will give it a miss either as several people I've asked about doing the event have also complained about the same ban on aural entertainment. Maybe I'll look at some other, less stringently managed races instead.