Category: Techo stuff

The New EV Chariot

A side view, so that I don’t have to blank the rego plates. 😎

Here we go! Everything is fine, except for the hundreds of pages of User Manual that I have to plough through every time I want to use or change a function.

It’s eerily quiet – spooky in Strine – but it does everything it’s meant to do with just a hint of a superior smirk if we don’t phrase our request in exactly the correct way. But we’re learning fast!

We’re trying to name her, but we haven’t yet reached agreement on what her name should be. Can any kind Charioteer make a suggestion? 😊

The Chariot is now an EV

Huh?

Well, not the Chariot precisely, but the conveyance used by our Boadicea to travel from place to place. We’ve put our ICE-powered companion out to grass- she was getting a little frail and battered around the edges – and purchased a bright-eyed, lecky-driven, millennium replacement.

Well, not quite, but the warrants have been signed, the executioner booked and the changeover set for the end of the month. Our extended test drive convinced us both that the future is already here, even for a pair of seniors like us.

Once we have our new chariot we’ll bore you with the details of our experiences, no doubt. 😎

EV = Electric Vehicle.
ICE = Internal Combustion Engine (petrol/gas or diesel)

It’s Greek to me

Not surprising perhaps. Phil has done some unusual things over his 97 years. He also seems to be stubborn to a fault.  Driving alone after a road accident he seems to have caused and without a seat-belt qualifies as evidence.

Today he is reported to have ‘surrendered his licence voluntarily‘. Which I’m sure is RoyalSpeak for being banned from driving. I mean, if I wanted to give up driving, I’d simply stop – with my licence intact. ‘Surrendering’ it implies police involvement – which I expect will lead in due course to serious charges.

Caveat voluntarius

It’s a magnus vicus where I live, not an urbs. (Come back, Latin haters, this is not periculosum.) But there seems to be a blossoming of interest in learning and studying Latin; perhaps even a resurrectio! I offered to teach a few discipuli and now there are multi waiting patienter to join us. But no, I must keep the pax Romana with a cohors minima amicorum. The mensae at the Waitrose taberna are non satis magnae for a multitudo!

O Aurigae, opto sitis felicissimi et felicissimae anno MMXIX

(‘O charioteers, I wish you guys and gals great happiness in 2019’)

No deal? Hurray!

Sorry to talk about this but in two days’ time Drunker will  tell us the EU’s rules on ‘no deal’. Ain’t that just typical? They’ve got rules about everything, even when we’re not negotiating! But the important thing is: no deal means we’re are out, Brexit is done and dusted, the political playground is finally closed and commercial reality in the shape of the WTO takes over. What’s more, Britannia and her acolytes will have the whip-hand again. She will choose where to go for trade – and sucks to Brussels. Next please.

New neighbours in Novopangea

In a couplahundrend million years or so, according to the DM, our soon-to-be-former-Euromates Spain will be cheek-by-jowl with Kenya, GB with Morocco, Alaska will be a lot warmer, penguins will overrun Chile, the Alps will be cosying up to the Himalayas – and OZ? Land-locked! No worries there then – except perhaps from China.

 

Full-colour horror story

The 1914/18 war was  always in monochrome; and film footage always depicted armies marching in double time, gesticulating like robots. But all that has changed, thanks to the modern technology Peter Jackson has deployed to shocking effect. I cannot imagine the reality of blood and guts in the trenches when the whole picture is revealed. Lest we forget? After this we never will.