Deadbeat Driving:

I have just done quite a long journey in an ancient Mercedes. The car in question is a 190d, of some 18 summers. It was chosen because;
a) this particular model was pretty much hand-built by painstaking, highly skilled German engineers and today represents affordable luxury motoring, and
b) The happy combination of old-fashioned, indirect-injection diesel engine and similarly over-engineered ex-truck injector pump means that the car runs brilliantly, without any modifications, on Tesco's cheapest vegetable oil (£1.70 for three litres.) (Be Warned: If you don't pay Her Maj tax on this fuel, Customs and Excise can become very annoying. If you do pay the duty, of course, it isn't cheap any more). The car is superb, and even has a couple of endearingly idiosyncratic faults.

The journey ended in Brittany, with three days of conviviality in the company of Ken and Gabrielle, who are doing a brilliant permaculture-orientated project.
Ken spent a number of years teaching the Police to drive, and the conversation naturally drifted towards the techniques of fast driving. We agreed that smoothness was paramount, and considered various ways to teach this.
At one point it was suggested that the best way would be to remove one of the engine mounts of a demonstration vehicle. To drive this car without initiating a mind-numbing clatter from beneath the bonnet would require very delicate control of brake, clutch and accelerator.
At this point, I was reminded of an article I had read many years previously in Car magazine, where the author had driven around for a couple of weeks with a blown exhaust. In order not to incur undue interest from the Men in Blue, he had been so very gentle with his right foot that he was sure that he had saved the cost of the eventual repair in fuel economy.
So if you want to learn to drive smoothly (and therefore quickly yet safely) and economically (thereby salving your conscience if not exactly saving the planet), what you need is a car with only one engine mount, and not much in the way of an exhaust system.
Funnily enough, I have the very machine you want. Best of all, it's a Mercedes.
All enquiries through the 'contact' button, below.

Further to Deadbeat 10, I received the following from a correspondent in Abingdon. I have edited it slightly, but without altering it materially. I post it below without further comment:

Your latest blog seems very close to my belief that "women can't single-task." Meaning of course their inability to focus totally on just one thing to the exclusion of all others ( like watching a bloody film without talking for god sake). They boast about multi-tasking, totally unaware that this is can be a weakness not a strength. Of course this goes back to the hunting days. When you're hunting or fishing you can't allow yourself to be distracted by some fruit growing over there, or "wouldn't those flowers look nice back in the cave?" If you lose focus whilst hunting a boar or a buffalo, you're dead. Of course if you are a gatherer, then it's essential to be distracted. You may be looking for mushrooms but you can also get some nuts, or a bit of fruit. Gathering is by its very nature multi-tasking. Hunting ain't. If you go out for an antelope, and instead come back with mushrooms and a bunch of daffs you're not going to impress anyone.
What I am saying is that this being lost in the moment is not a childish thing, it's a male thing. We don't grow out of it because it's part of our nature. When women claim that men don't grow up, they are, as you point out, complaining that boys don't grow up to be women. We can't multi-task, but they can't single-task.

Thanks Phil!

Please note, Dear Reader, that the diaries are also available on www.deadbeatdiaries.com, where, in future, comments to any of them will be posted, blog-stylee but with me in editorial control.

Bless the little lambs, for they will taste so sweet.

More later........

Deadbeat