Budget - who thought up that one?

Well, what a great budget that was eh?
Let me understand this right. If I am an average motorist who owns a car more than 10 years old, and have owned it for more than a year (i.e. since it was nine year old ...or longer) then I can tradeit in against a brand new car, and the governement will give me £1000, backed up by the motor industry giving me a further £1000, giving a £2000 rebate on a new car. Sounds great. except of course for 2 major problems. One, the motor industry have always given discounts if you ask for them, so all that will happen is that they will absorb the £1000 reduction into the list price of the car, knowing they can the afford to knock £1000 off the sale price. So what should have been a £13,000 car is now a £14,000 car less their discount. With it so far?
The second problem is, hwo many people do you know who drive a ten year old car by choice? Those that can afford a new car buy a new one say every three or four years. Those driving ten year old cars do so because that is all they can afford. This scheme wil not suddenly empower them financially to find the £11,000 to go and buy a new car. No, they will continue to run their ten year old car. Or they will take out finance deals to pay for the new car, thus returning us to the state we have just had, where people are borrowing money they can;t possibly afford to pay back!
Of course the GREENS are happy, because old cars are being crushed and old cars are as we all know dirty and smelly and pollute the atmosphere...... well don't be fooled. The majority of pollution a car will cause is in it;s manufacture, not in it's use. It is far greener to eke as much mileage as is possible out of a car once it has been manufactured, tahn to scrap it and make a new one.
Another concern is our great motoring heritage, and the huge cottage industry that supports it. This scheme may well support jobs in the manufacturing side of the motor industry, but it is a real kick in the teeth of the small restoration company, and the back street garages that make a living out of servicing and MOT testing the older and classic motors. If we drive older cars off the road (no pun intended) we dry up the work for these small businesses.
Ten years may well be the expected lifespan of a Eurobox produced by the modern factories of France, Korea, Japan and (shudder to think of it) China, but even the crap turned out by Rover in it's death throes will comfrtably see out 15 years if not 20 with regular servicing and a little TLC. Volvos, Saabs, BMW's, most VW's many Fords and almost all Jaguars will comfortably last 25 to 30 years - it's only fashion and consumer pressure that has made us change them so frequently in the first place. You have only to look at Cyprus, with it's admittedly kinder climate to see that even the cars of the 1970's when rust proofing was unheard of are still regualr sights on the roads. Cuba is an even bigger inspiration, with cars from the 1950's still in regular use, albeit running more modern LADA engines thanks to the communist regime, but still fettled and fixed to provide daily transport.
Where I wonder do the exoticars sit in the Goverment master plan? Is a 1999 Louts Elise now scrap fodder? Is a 1957 Corvette, in prsitne concours condition a classic worth saving or just a discount off a new Focus?
It's all a scam! The government reckon to have funded sufficent to allow 300,000 "old" cars to be scrapped in this scheme. Lets see what happens in the nest year shall we?

As a post script can I add that my 1994 Ford Fiesta Courier Van would be eligible for this scheme - If I had about £10000 I could trade it in for a new one. The new one would be Diesel engined, and no more economicial or less polluting than the one it replaced. In fact, as mine has already caused it's "production pollutuon" as discussed above and has since been converted to run on used Vegetable Oil it is actually carbon neutral and less polluting than the new one.......
Where, then is the sense in replacing it? Until it suffers a major mechanical failure or fails an MOT I will continue to use it, and unless the Government are willing to up the grants to £10,000, when that day finally comes I will spend another £400 or £500 on one of a simliar age and condition and use that.

Red Dwarf - Return to Earth

Well Red Dwarf was a bit of a damp squid wasn't it? It used to be a triple decker fried egg sandwhich with chilly sauce and chutney - all the ingredients were wrong but somehow it worked. Last night was like four mates who haven't met for 20 years getting together and not really knowing what to say. The absence of studio or canned laughter didn't help as it left an embarassing silence between the dialouge.
Where it used to be peppered with jokes, puns and amusing similies it had a rather feeble exchange of verbals that seemed to be just padding out the scenes. Rimmer reading Practical Classic Car magazine that Chris Barrie now writes for was perhaps supposed to be witty, but could just as easily have been an out take that got put in by mistake
The special effects were similarly disappointing after the big budget of the last few series. This was distinctly broom cupboard and foam cutouts.
I suppose being produced by DAVE instead of the BBC has a lot to do with it. SKY did the same with a one off Blackadder that was similarly lacklustre
I know the boys from the Dwarf aren't gettign any younger, but the magic and zest of the group dynamic seems to have died a premeautre death. When Laurel and Hardy made their last film, Utopia in 1950 they were tired, ageing and recognised as being at the end of their careers. Yet they still managed to make the film sparkle in places. The dwarf crew seem to be just going through the motions. And motions, remember, is a medical term for shit.
This should have been much better. Craig Charles can act well enough to make us think he fancies Liz McDonald for Christs sake! He could at least make an effort to out some animation into the job, like he did in the early series.
Chris Barrie used to raise a laugh with a simple facial expression, what happened? Is he paralysed or something? And where were his wonderful voices?
Kryten appears to have lost his nasal mechanoid voice, and The Cat had all the style and poise of Vicky Pollard.
I hope the remaining two episodes can redeem the Dwarfers and let them go out on a high. I don't want to remember them this way.
Otherwise Return to Earth, the inside of a ping pong ball and the VW Jetta will go down in history as the three least noteworthy things every written about.

Not posted in a while so here's an update on life, the Universe and Everything

As I sit here drunking rim and coke it occurs to me that I have been a negligent blogger for a while, so here is an update on what life has been doing to me.
The Credit crunch. On the whole this is a GOOD thing. For me at least. Allow me to explain. I have very little by the way of savings.
Because I worked an interest free credt card agreement just before I remortaged in October I had £6300 on 0% credit. It would have been silly to pay off 0% credit, so I banked the cash instead, which is now technically savings. I have been paying off an affordable amount of the interest free, reducing it to £5000. Meantime the £6500 which would have been paying off that credit has been earning a small but significant amount of interest in the bank, such that even after borrowing a small sum from myself I still have a profit of £54.47 to show.
Additionally, despite owing a mortgage of £122,000 my outgoings are now a mere £751 a month instead of £1000 in October. This means I can make overpayments to make up for the poor performance of my endowments which are failing because of the credit crunch. Still with me on this? Basically, although I had a payrise of less than inflation, and my earnings are eroded due to government incometence, I am able, due to Government incompetance, to make additional payments to make up for the endowments that due to Government incompetance have failed to perform as well as they might, if, of course we had a competent Government, who had controlled inflation better. And the banks.
Am I the only one confused by the Government Policy on this? If I print money, it's called forgery. If the Government print money it's called "Quantitive easing"
Then there's the Council Tax. This has gone up by 3.9% when inflation, we are told, was running at 3%, and my pay rise (or ct depending on your viewpoint) was 2.5%. I wrote to Stephen Parnaby, leader of East Riding of Yorkshire Council, and his response is that Council Tax has gone up for a number of reasons. One reaso is that more people ae living in the county! Well, excuse me, but if more people are living here, then surely they each pay council tax? More people paying should mean, on econmoies of scale, that council tax can be REDUCED!
perhapsERYC are actively encouraging non taxpayers into the area? The unemployed, students, disabled etc. It certainly appears so. Whenever I go into a supermarket car park you can't move for all the motabity cars, driven by people who are fat, lazy and incompetant. I have no issue with the genuinely disbaled. but those who have acheived disabilty status by drinking, drugtaking and eating to excess do not deserve to be supported by the taxpayers.

I don't care to name them. I don't judge them. I just grade them and smite them, swiftly and surely and by the wrath of God.

Well I would if only smiting were legal.

So what else is going on?

My Vegetable powered van runs on, smelling of chips and generally being very economical thank you. I still have to pay a stupid amount of road tax, not only for the van, but also NOT to use my ther car wcih stays in the gage NOT polluting the planet. I worked out that last year it did 4,300 miles The polution it (allegedly) created was less than the lowest polluting suprmini doing 6500 miles. Yet the road tax, to leave it largely at home, was SEVEN times that of the supergreen supermini. How fair is that?

Morever, the "green" vegetrian in his Peugeot 102or whatever probably FLIES to Majorca orsoem exotic holiday destination, polltuing the atmosphere with aviation fuel. I on the other hand holiday in the U with my caravan, with my "Gas Guzzler" (Which turns out to be greener after all) towing a caravan and upporting the British Economy! Except I don't because owing to all the taxes I pay I can't afford holiday (AGAIN!)

Oh well. There must be a General Election due soon. Guess where my votes going?

Solution to rush hour congestion

Normally I work shifts, so I drive to work in what is termed as "off peak" hours. I still drive during the day, and often through rush hour, but as someone is by then payng me to sit in traffic jams it has never really bothered me.
This week has been different; I have been on a course, working 9 to 5, 830 til 4 and tommorow I'll be 8 until 4. This has meant that I have had to travel in the rush hour in my own time and what a pain it is.
On a 7 a.m. start I can leave home as late at 6.30 and still arrive in a reasonably timely fashion (I am never late, that woudl be plain rude, but I am often timely, arriving just in time) For a 9 a.m. start I set off at 7.40, allowing for a longer jouney across the city of Hull, following the same route to my normal place of work to pick up equipment, then a further 5 miles or so to the training venue. I arrived 10 minutes late. One hour and thirty minutes to travel to work! A whole hour longer than my usual journey, just because i travelled at "rush hour." (Why is it called the rush hour anyway, whenh everything slows down?)
Like many I initially beleived the delay was simply due to an increased volume of traffic, but looking around there was in reality only marginally more traffic than when i usually travel.
To badly quote from the British Rail book of excuses, I concluded that the real reason for the delay was the "wrong sort of driver."
I am purely guessing at the demographics of the shift workers I normally travel to work with, but my instinct tells me that these are the "doers" of our society, the nurses, cleaners, police and ambulance staff, firemen, the factory workers, etc etc. In other words the people who have a role in life and know what they are doing.
The people travelling in the rush hour are the non productive workers, i.e. the office staff, teachers, trainers, marketers, advertising executives, managers, Tv producers, etc - i.e. the people who are good at telling other people what to do. They don't actually do anything themselves and can't make a decision to save their lives. As a result junctions confuse them. Roundabouts are a total mystery. Should they stay or should they go?
As well as an inability to make decisions they have an appaling lack of spacial awareness, so will fail to pull out into a gap that would easily accomodate the Ark Royal, then inexplicably pull into a microgap the size of a Smart cars glovebox, causing everyone to grind to a halt. Then the whole charade starts again.
Even worse. driving amongst them are the Librarians, the data analysts, and research assistants, the timid folk, who are startled by everything. These are the drivers who wait at traffic lights for several seconds after they have changed green, before they eventually move off. Normal drivers release the handbrake and have the car in gear and the clutch half way up on the amber, smoothly pulling away the instance the green comes on. Not so the Librarian. He, or more commonly she, is always caught out by the appearance of the green signal, because he/she is mesmerised by the pretty lights, and wonders what colour might come next. The expect a pretty blue, or maybe mauve, anyhting but a green. And even when green appears they have to consult their Highway Code to be certain what it means and what to do next. Thanks to them we get two or three cars through each cycle of the lights where normally you could get ten through, plus the three sales reps who follow through on the amber and the taxi driver who comes through on the red phase.
Probably the worse of all though are the CPS lawyers on their way to court. They know exactly what they should do, all the pro's and cons, the right from wrong. It is writeen, therefore it is the law. But, when they get to a KEEP CLEAR marking or a junction they cannot make a simple decision as to whether they should leave it clear or block it. Leaving it clear is the best thing, but if they do that traffic will emerge from the junction and then block the path of those on the main road. Is this in the public interest they ask themselves? So they block it instead - but is that proportional and justified. It might go against the rights of those on the minor road. It might even offend those of a particular religious persuasion. What they really need to do is study the evidence for a while, and gain an insight into what the general populace do. Perhps have some CCTV footage to view before they decide? Ideally they would like to defer the decision for a couplke of weeks. The poor creatures suffer angst overload all the way to work, and their driving becomes increasingly inconsitent as their decision alters at every turn.
Of course, once the rush hour is over thing return to normal, the traffic volume may be slightly less, but it is more likely because the right sort of drivers return to the roads. Sales reps, who drive for a living, and the unemployed, who don't. The unemployed probably drive better than the office workers group because they drive olders cars and are far more likely to have no insurance or licence, and are more likely to be pulled over. They don't want to draw unnecessary attention to themselves so they obey more of the rules and drive with common sense, hence traffic flows better.
The solution to the problem then, is to ban anyone who works in an office from travelling in their own car during rush hour. Buses don't run at convenient hours for shift workers, so we have no choice, and the unemployed who don't drive can afford to go by taxi, I know because I've seen them at ASDA. Rush hour sees hundreds of buses, all carrying one passenger, using the bus lane. It moves swiftly and freely, and should be full of these dithering office workers, who work 9 to 5 and have no excuse to use the car, a machine they are at best incompetent with, and at worse downright dangerous. Put them on the buses, and leave the roads empty at rush hour.
That way, next time I am on a course I can get to work as quick as a shift worker. As it stands, I will be setting off at 6.30 for my 8.30 start.

Mervin has a little Hiccup.

Firstly a Happy New Year to both my readers.

And now a progress report on Mervin the Happy Little Courier Van. Mervin has been running happily on Veg Oil mixed with just a little diesel since I bought him back in October. I have noticed he has been getting a little bit thirstier, but put that down to him needing a good service.

New Years Eve however saw Mervins first ever "failure to commence." If you've not heard this expression before it is one coined by Rolls Royce technicians in their early history. Rolls Rpyce motor cars did not refuse to start, they failed to commence. Likewise they did not ever break down, merely failed to proceed. Regardless, when Mervins key was turned there was that dull click from the solenoid and nothing else. This was odd, becasue so far as I could tell the battery was fully charged and he had shown no prior signs of his intention to go on strike. Attaching jump leads and a Proton failed to remedy the problem, and I concluded a starter failure as the probably cause. A call to my good friend Graeme and he was soon on his way with a length of tow rope. Normally I would have push started a car with these symptoms, but due to the veg oil conversion Mervin needs a lot of battery power to supply the heater, and a good urn over before he fires up, by which time the pusher has run out of puff. Nether the less, within about 5 yards he started on a tow, and ran perfectly all the way home, until he failed to start again when tested on the driveway.

Enquiries witht the local boneyard showed that there were three possible starters that the van could have been fitted with, so it was a case of removing the dead one and taking it in to match up with a replacement - or having it rewound and refurbished if a replacement wasn't an option.

And so complete with New Years Day hangover I prepared to strip the starter off only to find the electrical connections were suspiciously loose. A good clean up, some vaseline and reconnection saw Mervin starting once more. Hurrah, a cost free repair! Well not quite, as whilst i had the bonnet up I noticed lots of fuel swiling about the top of the engine block. Closer examination revealed that the fuel return hoses that run between the injectors had perished, allowing fuel to squirt out at running pressure - no wonder he had become thirsty over the last few tankfuls - he was drinking 3/4 and showering in the rest.

A new hose kit was fitted at the princely sum of £5 (Thanks James at Roads Ahead) and the fuel supply is now restrained where it should be.

With Mervin now apparently running okay I decided it was time to get my trailer tyre replaced, so I set off witht he shredded tyre to get a new one.

One of the many benefits of living in rural East Yorkshire is that the roads are congestion free, which means I had travelled almost 13 miles into the city before I first had to apply brakes or signals. When I did i noticed the green arrow tell tale on the dash looked noticeably dim - something as running down my battery. As I cleared the roundabout and ground to a halt I realised (as I turned the stereo off) that the starter motor had been turning for the last 25 minutes or so. Somehow, in cleanng up the cotacts I had manage to bridge across the two terminals leaving the motor permenantly live. A single wire strand from my wire brush seemed to be the problem, and once removed this cleared the short but left me high and dry, having run out of electricity in the battery.

A phone call to my good friend Graeme secured hsi attendance, and this time 15 secinds with jump leads was enough to get me moving again. Forget the RAC, AA and Green Flag, everyone should have a Graeme. Well, everyone with a banger shoudl have a Graeme. mind you they would need a Martin as well.

The upshot of this is that I have had two breakdowns in two outings, but Mervin is now running much more efficiently, using less fuel and starting better as well. I may get roudn to painting a bit more of his bodywork soon, or maybe give him a proper service. In the meantime he continues to provide cheap daily transport to and from work, and is doing stirling work going to and from the tip, moving various items around and generally being a very useful engine!

Christmas Shopping

From a draft first written last Christmas:
I may have touched on this subject in a previous entry, so bear with me if you've heard it before, but Shopping drives me mad.

Granted, men generally don't do shopping, we don't enjoy it, we are not programmed for it. But just occasionally and to keep her indoors happy we have to show willing and go and get cheese and nibbles and a chicken or something, rather than the car mags beer and gadgets we really want to buy. This means going into unfamiliar parts of the supermarket, by which I mean all of it. The entire supermarket is unfamiliar, because seemingly once a week the displays are re-arranged to confuse and confound the unwary. There is no reason or logic in the layout. I tried to find bread sauce, you would think that would be under the heading of "Home Baking" NO NO NO. It is under sauces. Brandy sauce, however is not under Sauces at all, but with the custard and rice pudding. Or possibly with the Christmas Pudding. Why do we need to buy bread sauce anyway? Given that no one eats it? It is one of those traditional things put on the Christmas dinner plate to be left over at the end of the meal. And why buy a packet mix of the damn stuff, when it is basically a white sauce with some bread crumbs in it? Even I can make a simple white sauce and put some stale bread crumbs in it. Anyway I digress from the main point.

Our roads are proliferated with signs and speed bumps, chicanes and parking regulations to keep us where we should be, speed us up, slow us down, prevent us from stopping or divert us from where we want to be. Our supermarkets, by comparison, are entirely lawless.

Yet no-where but supermarkets are such regulations more urgently needed. There are customers, women mostly, well alright, women exclusively, who want to make shopping a social event. Not for them the idea of going in, selecting a purchase, paying for it and going home. No. They want to meet friends and have prolonged conversations about nothing in particular whilst they are there. Not a problem, you might think, most supermarkets now have a cafe or restaurant attached. These of course, miss the point completely. These women don't want to shop and then chat, they want to chat whilst they shop, or more accurately they want to chat in between shopping. That is why they can be seen blocking the aisle with their trolleys having a lengthy discussion about nothing in general whilst you struggle to get through with a trolley with a wonky wheel to reach the milk. They are totally oblivious to the havoc they cause. They stand belligerently in the way, as you try in vain to squeeze apologetically past them to reach the tinned raspberries, and look at you as if you are some reckless impatience git, just because you want to finish this hateful shopping mission today.

They should be paying congestion charges, they are there so long. No where in Britain are traffic police needed more than in the supermarket. There are more cases of careless driving, illegal parking and abandoned vehicles (trolleys) anywhere than inside a supermarket.

For supermarkets to be more attractive to men we now need, no, we demand the following;

1. A sensible layout, where the beer milk, potatoes and heavy items are at the front of the shop and not the back, so that they are in the bottom of the trolley and not squashing the fruit and veg you have to pick first on the way in as per the current layout.

2. Strictly enforced No Waiting policy in the aisles.

3. Abandoned trolleys to be removed immediately and impounded.

4. No socialising allowed within the shop floor area, this to be permitted only inside the Cafe.

5. Minimum speed limit of 5 mph, anyone loitering to be forcibly moved on by security.

6. Items to be displayed clearly and logically. Any seasonal display at Christmas should therefore include the aforementioned bread sauce, Christmas Pudding, Crackers (both novelty and cheese) Stuffing, beer, wine, whiskey, sherry etc etc. Likewise, during the Summer (the first Sunday in July I beleive) there should be raw meat, sausages, barbecues, garden chairs, lawnmowers, beer and a bottle of Pimms for the ladies, all available within one easy to reach display section.

7. A topless Page 3 girl operatimnga special till for men only. Some may say this is taking things to far, but we already have special tills for the disabled, the deaf, mothers, elderly folk, etc etc. So why not have one specially for men. What man doesn;t look for the most attractive girl on the till anyway, regardless of how long the queue may be, so he can indulge in a little innocent flirting? None of us pick out the minger with the facial hair and the squint.

8. SatNav on the trolleys. Men love gadgets, and it would save an awful lot of time if you could type "tinned peaches" into the trolley handset and it directed you straight to them. Because you can be damned sure they won't be in the same place they were in last week.

9. Express haggling checkouts. Men love to get a bargain - or at least the feeling that they have got a bargain. The current express checkouts where you serve yourself are good, but you have to remove everythign from the trolley, scan it and put it all back. Far better would be the automated haggling checkout, where you make a "best offer" like on Ebay, then the robot either accepts your offer or haggles until a fair price is reached. The trolley could have a scannr built in, so the store would have a rough idea of the value of goods you've thrown in there. This would speed up th process at the checkout no end.

10. A bar in the car park, wih valet loading - you go for a beer, whilst a uniformed manservant loads your purchases into the car for you, returning your keys once he's completed the task.

And if all that is too far fetched, then let us have online shopping that is interesting. We need to see visually and in true to life scale what we are buying, and how full it makes the trolley look, so gve us a 3D lifelike image of the store with a trolley we can guide around it, throwing virtual goods into it. The store would be empty of course except for Page 3 girls on the virtual chekout. And if anyvirtual granny or wailing toddler got in the way we could blast them with the trolley mounted laser cannon. Now that's what I call shopping!

Grand Day Out 3

For our December Walk we had settled on a two day challenge, intending taking on two of the three Yorkshire Peaks, Ingleboruogh and Pen-y-ghent, leaving Whernside for another day. Some of our usual suspects couldn't make it, and when Rachel dropped out due to work commitments, so did Dawn, lewaving just the stalwarts to go on, Dave Selby and PK along with myself. The plan of attack was an 0445 start, pick up at Driffield then to Horton In Ribbersdale where we would be staying the night after tackling one of the peaks, then doing the next on the Wednesday before returning home in plenty of time for work on Thursday. (Although I was hoping to be contacted by duties with an extra day off!)

As ever plans went to ratshit the moment we left Driffield, with a snowfall hampering our progress through to Horton. Oh yes, and to make things worse we arrived in Horton, thanks to SatNav woman, who managed to steer us off the wrong junctions whenever we hit the A1 or M1, rather than the similarly named and fortunatley not to faraway Horton in Ribbersdale. Snow had settled, but ceased falling by the time we set off up Ingleborough at about 1120 hours.

Having gone only a short distance it started to snow again, but as it was on and off, and not a serious blizzard we decided to push on - there was perhaps 2 to 3 inches of snow by now, and it was probably hovering about -6 degrees, but hey, what the hell. We'd come a long way, we were dressed for the weather and determined to get some walking in right? Light weights we are not (particularly the fat lad!) Visibilty began to deteriorate sporadically, but it's a well waymarked track and confident in Daves map reading and falling over abilties we pressed onwards. A breif luncheon sojourn in a derelict shooting lodge provided welcome relief from the wind and snow, and the opportnity to enjoy a glass of red wine with my Duck and port wine pate sandwiches - well, one has to keep standards doesn't one? In the absence of any girls we enjoyed a Yorkie too.

We pushed on and by 1400 hours had reached a decision point. Visibilty was almost nil, further snowfall had left about 6 inches of snow now settled on the ground with progres becoming more difficult. Dave had fallen over/slipped about 5 times by now (his total was 8 by the time we got back) and although he is well padded and escaped serious injury there was a real risk on of us might break something. incredibly, despite the sub zero temperatures, I had a sweat on from the exersions of making progress against what had now turned into a blizzard, with stinging freezing rain and hail being propelled at us sideways.

We reckoned we were only maybe 20 minutes from the summit, but the last 20 minutes is a hard climb, requiring the use of hands in places, and in the conditions it would have been too risky to push on. Even by 2 p.m. with the falling snow and cloud cover the light was starting to fail, and if we had taken the risky decision to push on it would have meant making the latter part of the return journey in the dark. We made the wise decision to turn back and head for the pub, with a vow to return in better weather, with more daylight hours to play with. incredibly, and to our joint surprise, given the remotness of our location, it was at precisely thsi moment that my mobile phone rang and duties granted me Thursday as a rest day. Proof indeed that they can reach you anytime, anyplace, amywhere! Strangely, immediately I terminated the call I lost the signal, and only gained a strong signal once we returned to the pub. Bob works in mysterious ways.
Left: The snow got deeper than this in places, over black ice on the rocky bits - very slippery!

At the pub (I forget the name of it - was it the Globe?) we had booked bunks in the bunk room, which turned out to be colder than a badgers nose, and turning on the radiators did little to improve things. Still, things would improve after a nice hot shower and a meal, right?

The hot shower proved a little too much to ask. There where two showers, one had a broken control for the heat adjustment, and none of us had pliers, so it would only give cold showers. The other one worked fine for the Selby person, but then refused to give hot water for anyone else - not in any quantity anyway. It would either give a jetwash of cold water, or a trickle of superheated steam too hot to bear - but nothing in between.

The bar opened at 6 with the promise of a mixed grille. Unfortunately chef didn;t have the ingredients for a mixed grill, despite the hills being covered in "them big woolly dogs" (sheep) and cows he was short of eggs, lamb chops and something else. We settled on fillet steak but guess what - he didn't have that either, but he did have sirloin which was very tasty when it arrived. PK plumped for Fish and Chips which looked equally appertising. Sadly the Black Wooly Dog bitter had run out, as had my second choice. I had the distinct impression this place was running down for the winter. I ended up with Timothy Taylor biter which was palatable right up until i drank the barrel dry and had to switch to John Smiths - did I really get through 8 pints that night? PK and Dave meanwhile were drinking Guiness, which didn't bode well for the ambience in the bunkhouse later.

At least a tenner disappeared into the pool table and a very sociable evening was had by all, retiring to the bar until about midnight, when we ran out of money and our drinking trousers wore out, much to the reilief of the barmaid, who we had christened Ingrid, for no other reason than she had revealed herself to be a Student visiting from Austria. We never asked her real name.

The bunkhouse was Bloody freezing, and dispite the beer coat and thermal vest it was an uncomfortable night for me, although to be fair my sleeping bag is summer weight - PK had some sort of centrally heated NATO surplus sleeping bag with a built in DVD player, minibar, colour satelitte TV, with hot and cold running water and reports that he was quite comfortable. Mind you, he fell out of his third storey bunk at one point so he could have been suffering concussion whe he said this. The night was punctuated by the homely smell of Guiness farts and PK's tuneful snoring.

Breakfast couldn't come to soon. Incredibly noone had a hangover, and the concensus of opinion is that the beer must be watered down. Despite having ordered full English breakfast, surprise surprise there were no eggs. I don;t see why the Chef couldn't have nipped out overnight and got soem from the loal Tesco's, it was only about 50 miles away, and the snow hadn't got that much worse, only another couple of inches falling overnight.

More snow was forecast however, so despite the clear blue skies and the inviting slope of Pen-y-Ghent it was probably a wise decision to cut and run and head for home. Pk was suffering a knee injury he insists is from the walking rather than the drunken buffoonery of falling out of bed, and I was feeling the effects of too little sleep. Rather than risk getting cut off in the snow and unable to return home (which would have been a terrble shame - snowed in in a pub!) we set off reluctantly for home. No point being stuck in a pub with no beer, no eggs and surrounded by Woolly dogs you can't eat.

Pen-Y-Ghent (or that dark brooding bastard, as Dave would have it) looking terribly inviting under a cloudless blue sky.

We shall return and conquer.

The car doors were welded shut by the snow and ice, and it took considerable effort to defrost and release it. Temperature at that time (about 1015) had risen to -4, so the overmight low was probably -10 or less, and we reckon about -7 (plus the wind chill factor) when we tackled the climb up Ingleborough. Okay, it doesn't make us Chris Bonnington, but it certainly gives a feeling a achievement to have got as far as we did given the conditions.