I am a big fan of Depeche Mode and have been since they added their two-penneth worth to the synth-pop scene of the early 1980s. Most people are surprised to find that the band are still together and are still touring and producing albums. Their latest offering, Sounds of the Universe, was released this week and just as I have done since the release of Violator in 1990, I’ve bought a Depeche Mode album on launch day.

To be honest, this time around I wish I hadn’t bothered.

Sounds of the Universe is horribly average. It’s a chore to listen to – there are no hooks, there’s little punch or interest, tracks start, build up then go nowhere. It’s a crying shame as the quality of the album’s production values is fantastic.

We’re four albums on since Songs of Faith and Devotion and still Depeche Mode prove that they cannot make good music without Alan Wilder.

It’s a 2003 Volkswagen Golf GTI that I bought for much cheapness back in November 2006. I admit, I don’t clean it as often as I should and I still can’t get rid of that horrible smell in the boot from when a carton of milk split open in a shopping bag, but do I try my best to look after it and I always try to keep it running in a tip-top condition.

Despite my efforts, this hasn’t stopped the car from trying to fall to pieces over the past two weeks…

Day 1, Thursday:

On a cold Thursday evening myself and a couple of friends (Kerry and Patsy) were travelling to see a friend’s play in Bruton, Somerset, when things started to go a bit awry. So far the journey had been uneventful; it was only when we were ten minutes away from our destination that the words ‘STOP COOLANT‘ appeared in the digital display of my car’s dashboard. The temperature gauge had suddenly climbed off the scale – the engine was overheating! I immediately stopped the car and looked under the bonnet expecting to be blasted by red-hot steam from a boiling engine. Instead I was surprised to find that everything looked normal; there was no steam, no searing heat and no water leaks.

We were in the middle of nowhere in darkest rural Somerset. Not wishing to be savaged by a wolf or speared by a pitchfork-wielding yokel, we limped the car to a service station a few miles down the road so we could at wait in safety for the AA rescue service to come and help us. Fortunately there was a nice Chinese restaurant at the service station for us to shelter in. As my passengers enjoyed the prawn crackers, chow mein and numerous glasses of red wine, I sat at the table with my grumpy trousers on, cursing at the current condition of my car and the forthcoming expensive repair bills.

An hour later the man from the AA arrived, except he wasn’t an AA man. He was Keith, a mechanic from Melksham who had a tow-truck and contracted for the AA. I didn’t care that he was unable to fix my car at the roadside; I just wanted to get home, as did Keith when he discovered that he would be sharing the journey with a drunken Kerry and Patsy. Fortunately the journey was quick, my car was soon back in its garage and I started to look on the internet to see what could be wrong with my car.

One of the advantages of owning a boy-racer-type car is that there is a lot of third-party information available for it on-line . One excellent resource for Golf owners is http://uk-mkivs.net. I browsed the website’s forums to see if anyone else had suffered the same automotive ailment as I. Within minutes I had discovered several posts telling of vehicles that had suffered sudden temperature rises in the engine. It seems that a common malady in a high-mileage Golf is a worn impeller in the water pump. This causes a pump failure so the water in the engine ceases to circulate, hence the cold engine bay but high internal engine temperatures. To replace the water pump, the cam belt has to be removed so it’s a good idea to get the belt replaced at the same time as the pump. Total job time:  three hours.

A broken VW golf water pump

Armed with this information I was ready to contact a garage to arrange a repair.

Day 2, Tuesday:

The garage could not fit my car in for a repair until the Tuesday the week afterwards. This was not an issue as I was in no rush to get the car up and running. That being said, I did need the car for the following weekend but I was sure the repair would be completed by then.

As Tuesday came I dropped the car off at the garage at a prompt 8.00am. By 8.30am I had received a phone call from the garage informing me that the car did not have a water leak. I replied that this was good news as the car did not have water leak when I took it in to them and that it was, judging by my web-based diagnosis, a problem with the water pump.

At 2.00pm I received another phone call from the garage. They explained that it wasn’t a fault with the water pump after all; it was a problem with the thermostat. I was a bit concerned with this news as I was sure that a thermostat fault would not give the same symptoms as a failed water pump. Still, a faulty thermostat was a lot cheaper to replace than a water pump so I was in some way glad I was wrong.

At 3.30pm I received yet another phone call. The garage had taken the car for a test run and had decided that the water pump had failed. They advised that it would be a good idea to replace the cam belt at the same time as the pump as it needs to be removed to gain access. They said the repair should take about three hours so the car should be ready by the end of the next day.

Day 3, Wednesday:

I popped round to the garage to see how they were progressing with the pump change. The car was on a ramp and was being tended to by a mechanic who turned out to be an old school chum. He showed me the old water pump – the plastic impeller had exploded and turned itself to shrapnel. He said that the new pumps have metal impellers and should not implode like the older units. Along with a new cam belt, the car should be ready by Thursday.

Day 4, Thursday:

With the repairs complete and my wallet a considerable £350 lighter I nervously took the car home, driving with one eye on the road and one on the temperature gauge.

Later that evening I took the car for a test run, a thirty-mile trip to Trowbridge to see my brother and his family. The car performed flawlessly, save for a horrid whining noise from the engine that got higher in pitch as I increased the revs. Sure that that this noise was not there before the repair work was done, I thought I’d better take it back to the garage.

Day 5, Friday:

As I drove into the garage the mechanics winced at the noise. Straight away they’d identified the horrid whining as a faulty tensioner (a tensioner being part of the cam belt system). They took the car from me and, in their own words, re-started the job from scratch. When they returned the car to me the noise was still there but it was much, much quieter.

Thankful that the work was finally completed I drove the car home and planned my weekend. I was supposed to be driving to Hatfield in Hertfordshire on the Saturday morning and I was glad my car was ready for the journey.

Day 6 and Day 7:

The car performed flawlessly over the weekend. It nonchalantly glided down motorways and handled boy-racer starts at traffic lights with ease. Even the whining noise seemed to subside.

Day 8, Monday:

As I drove the car over one of the many oversized speed bumps near my home (the type of speed bumps that bring all traffic to a halt save for buses that can still speed at 40mph outside the school) I heard a massive bang from underneath the car. Thinking that I had ground the car on the speed bump I checked for damage. I found none, so I tentatively drove the car home. As I drove over another speed bump there was yet another loud bang, followed by groan, then the clanging of metal hitting the ground. I checked for damage again and found a U-shaped piece of metal on the ground under the car.

Day 9, Tuesday:

When I took the car back into the garage the look on the mechanics faces was priceless – they were sure I had returned with yet another water-pump problem! Once I had reassured them that the engine was fine, they quickly identified the U-shaped piece of metal as part of a suspension coil. It seemed that when I drove the car over the speed bump, the spring gave way and dropped the suspension causing the huge banging sound. A quick repair, the garage offered to replace the spring as soon as possible. I left the car with them wondering whether I’d see ever see it again.

Spring had sprung

Day 10, Wednesday:

The replacement spring cost £110 to repair, which isn’t that bad, but it did seem much more when I took into account the £350 I had spent on repairs the week before. But at least the car was repaired, at least I could drive it away safe in the knowledge that it would no longer overheat, whine or bang and would no longer cost me any more money in repair bills.

Except that the exhaust is starting to blow.

And it needs a new tyre on a rear wheel.

And the fuel tank is nearly empty.

A gas-guzzling money pit indeed!

Inside the tunnel of the LHC

As the test firing of the Large Hadron Collider commenced at about 0930BST this morning, certain cretinous people around the world prepared for the end of the world as the care-free scientists of CERN played god with science.

They didn’t destroy the world of course, the fact you are reading this now proves it. And don’t get all existential with smart-alec comments about how we’ve shifted dimensions either, no damage has been done as CERN have only fired two beams of protons to test the circuit of the huge undergroud tunnel; the first low energy particle collisions are still days away.

I must quote Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University who was reported in the Daily Telegraph article linked above as saying, “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t—.”

Anybody still concerned about the LHC can visit www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com to check on the status of the Earth’s exisitance.

I do like these new self-serve checkouts they have at all the major supermarkets. Not only do they reduce the opportunity for clod-brained supermarket staff to treat me like a criminal, they give us normal members of the public the chance to be a checkout girl/boy and play with the scanning lasers without the shame of having to get a job in a supermarket in the first place.

You know the type of person, it’s a person whose stupid opinions punctuate level-headed, sensible journalism by contorting any article into a pro-Nazi Muslim-baiting propaganda message.

I particularly liked one example of a person who felt the need to take time to write to the BBC complaints section to say, “The weather presenter was heavily pregnant, which annoyed me immensely. Instead of standing there looking as if she was about to give birth, she should just go home and look after herself. Someone needs to tell her to stop being so silly.”

spEak You’re bRanes – If you like it so much, why don’t you go live there?

Readers, please be aware that if a credit card transaction fails when you are at the checkout of your local branch of Tesco, you are only a rectal examination away from being treated like a criminal.

Two days ago I’d heard a rumour that the Tesco chain of stores is one of only two outlets that sell the larger jars of Vegemite (the other store is Waitrose, a store that is so middle-class it makes me want to claim benefits). As the meat-free yeast paste forms such an important part of my daily diet, I decided to pop into Swindon’s largest Tesco store to procure me some of that ol’ yeast spirit.

Whilst in the store I decided to stock up on a few essential items, namely a loaf of Hovis Best of Both bread (for the indecisive amongst us), a microwave curry ready meal (reaffirming my bachelorism), the aforementioned Vegemite and a box of Grape Nuts (a breakfast cereal whose name is worth more than the contents of the packet).

The total cost of the items outweighed the monetary content of my moth-ridden wallet so I had to pay for them using my debit card. At the checkout the cashier performed the card-swiping ritual (although using Chip and Pin technology, Tesco still decide that they need to swipe the card) only to have the computer suffer a ‘blip’ and not verify the existence of my card (or something). This lead to the secret button hidden under the checkout being pressed, which in turn silenced the in-store music, sounded the loudest klaxon you’d ever heard and caused the illuminated number fourteen checkout sign to flash pathetically (only this last bit was true).

Almost immediately a manager bounded over to the checkout and took over the transaction. Because my card could not be verified, I had to sign my signature on the till receipt to complete the payment. Because the signature on my manky old debit card had worn off several years ago, the manager decided that for security reasons I could not pay with the card. I offered to re-sign the card but this was deemed a security risk. To verify my identification I volunteered my other bank card, my official CORGI identification card, the card I use to gain access to a military installation and my National Insurance card, all of which were refused as it was deemed a security risk.

Meanwhile, the queue at the checkout slowly grew in number and my fellow customers started to grow restless at the delay. The minimum wage security guard looked over in my direction, but having noticed that I was not of an ethnic minority or a chav, decided to redirect his attention back towards fondling his ex-forces moustache. Eventually I was lead by the manager to another checkout so he could attempt to re-swipe my card and complete the payment. As the whole process was restarted, I asked what would happen if I cancelled the sale, left the store, re-signed my debit card, re-entered the store and tried to pay again; would they accept the card as payment? He declined to answer, stated that the sale was complete and I should think about changing my debit card.

I left the store, safe in the knowledge that everybody else now thinks that I was some sort of international credit card cheat. As I puzzled over the events that occurred back at the checkout, I looked back towards the manager to see him calmly restocking the carrier bag dispenser. With my debit card fiasco over, he had successfully demonstrated his god-like power over me. He patiently distributed carrier bags as he waited to thwart yet another attempt by terrorists to obtain groceries without paying.

The Vegemite on toast I made when I got back home was very nice.

Am I the only person in the world who can correctly use the Blockbuster movie rental stores?

To use a Blockbuster rental store correctly you must:

• Enter the store
• Select an empty movie DVD case from the shelf
• Take it to the cashier, along with a Blockbuster membership card and a method of payment, who will give you a DVD of the selected movie
• Leave the store.

Whenever I try to rent a movie from a Blockbuster, be it the branch in in West Swindon or Hatfield, the people in the queue ahead of me always seem to “break the shop”. If they’re not trying to rent a film that isn’t in stock or doesn’t exist, they’re trying to rent a film without actually being a member, or trying to haggle over the prices (“Can I rent it for just this afternoon for half price?”) *, or trying to spend a discount voucher that expired in 1998, or trying to pay in Pfennig. Whatever it is they are trying to do, they always do it ahead of me in the queue and they always take a long time to do it.

It doesn’t help that the staff are either mentally deficient, foreign, or both (although the Eastern European Avril Lavigne look-alike in the West Swindon branch is an exception). When recently trying to rent a copy of the German film The Edukators, the Lurch look-alike behind the counter struggled to navigate the hap-hazard filing system and couldn’t find the DVD (it was filed under E, not T), he then took great efforts to warn me that the film is German and is subtitled, am I okay with that because some people aren’t and I could choose another film if I wanted to …

The problems seem to continue even after I’ve left the store. I never actually got to watch The Edukators as the DVD had previously been rented and man-handled by Edward Scissorhands; it was so scratched it refused to play in my DVD player.

So I have to endure another visit to Blockbuster so I can obtain a refund. Maybe Lurch will get confused and think I’m demanding a refund because the film is subtitled.
*this actually happened