Is it just me or are car headlights getting brighter? I do remember when I was younger my Grandad used to complain that headlights were dazzling and that was one of the main reasons that he gave up driving, admittedly he was eighty.
Just recently I was talking to a friend of mine who is a few years older than I am and he was complaining about how bright car headlights had become.
I remember when Halogen lights were the thing to have as they were so much brighter than normal headlights, then we got Xenon, or HID (High intensity Discharge) and now of course LED.
There is an advanced form of LED lights, known as Matrix and then the most expensive and brightest of all are Laser. Most cars come with Halogen H4’s as standard but you can get a H4 converter kit so as to upgrade your lights, although as more and more cars are now available as Electric they are being fitted with LED’s.
Of course, brighter is safer, lights up your path, helps you to see better, where you are going. That’s all very well and good, but what about all the other drivers on the road who can’t see a blind thing because your lights are so bright and dazzling!
Oh yeah, that’s right, no-one else on the road matters, just me and my car. Go where I like, park where I like, as long as I can get to where I’m going never mind the rest of them!
(Sorry, think I got a bit sidetracked for a moment there)
Back onto the original topic, I did read that one manufacturer has had to recall a number of vehicles as the headlights have been deemed too bright, so it obviously isn’t just me!
Still, another day maybe I’ll talk about Projector and Adaptive Lights!
Middle Lane Hoggers on the Motorway, straight on straight into and there I shall stay! Never mind that there is no traffic on the inside lane or two and there is a queue behind them waiting to overtake but can’t because the outside lane is busy, or that cars are coming through on the inside so as to get past, there they sit staring straight ahead, oblivious to the world around them, not a care in the world.
Technically it should be classed as driving without due care and attention! This is a topic (Can you still get a Topic Bar, with a Hazelnut in every bite?) that keeps irking me.
If you don’t like or don’t feel comfortable changing lanes, then don’t go on the motorway and make it difficult and dangerous for everybody else! At least don’t just dolly along in the middle lane at 60 mph when the rest of the traffic is doing somewhere near 70.
There was talk of prosecuting people that just stayed in the middle lane for miles and miles especially when the inside lane or lanes were empty, but you never hear of it.
Another thing is people who brake suddenly when the gantry signs show a slower speed than everyone is doing, just take your foot off the accelerator to slow down as opposed to making everyone brake for no real reason.
Still on a motoring theme, we’ve been travelling up the A1 quite a lot recently with work and other main A roads, and it’s got us looking for buildings that used to be Little Chef restaurants.
Quite a few have quite logically just been transformed into other restaurants, a couple into Sex shops, one of which, near Sawtry, just south of Peterborough, is in the throws of being demolished.
I’m pretty sure that I used to have a booklet / directory of Little Chef locations and I’m hoping that I’ve had the good sense to throw it away and it’s not one of those things that I am for some reason hanging onto!
Recently had to travel to Moreton-in-Marsh in Oxfordshire, to load up a house removal that was coming back to Bedfordshire. On the way there we had to pass The Rollright Stones, yes I’ve mentioned these before, and how they sound like a Tribute version of The Rolling Stones, and how I moved a guy who thought very little of Tribute Bands. Well this got us talking about all these old bands from the 70’s, 80’s or even 90’s that are still touring and when you look at the line up of many of these bands, a lot of them have just one, or maybe two original members.
Quite a few have no original band members, possibly someone on guitar who joined a few years down the line, so surely in effect this makes them a tribute band. But as they have someone who was in the band way back when, they are using the original band name so no-one thinks anything of it.
On our way back we had to stop off in Chipping Norton, to collect a piano for another customer. The house was set back behind all the other houses in the street down a long driveway, the road was narrow and there was no way that the large removal lorry would make it down the drive.
It couldn’t stop in the road as it was taking up all of it, so it had to go the 100 metres to the top and park on the main road. This of course meant that the piano, on leaving the house had to travel along the driveway and then up the road, which obviously was a hill, a short distance along the main road and then up the lorry’s ramp into the back to be secured for the journey back to Bedfordshire.
Not being in the lorry, I wanted to go back to the Rollright Stones so that I could visit the Whispering Knights, who I never got to see last time, but the other two wanted to go to Diddly Squat Farm Shop (Clarkson’s Farm), so that is of course where we went.
On arrival, it was clear that Friday is a popular day for visiting, as even the overflow car park was more than half full. The queue to even get into the shop was very long and no-one wanted to be standing around for half an hour or more just to get in there,
so we left!
I’ve mentioned before about ‘Whamageddon’, which is trying to avoid hearing the song Last Christmas, by Wham, for as long as you can during December, when you hear it, you’re out!
This year, as usual, we went round a friend’s for our annual Christmas Breakfast, apparently this year was the 14th breakfast, and before I went in, I asked our host about her Christmas playlist, as last year that’s where I got Whammed.
She told me that it was the first song and was about to go on, so I stayed out in the hallway so as to avoid hearing it. I managed to avoid hearing it until the evening of the 21st when it came on whilst we were in Sainsbury’s. That’s the longest that I have managed to last, since it has been going.
There are 2 or 3 covers of it out there, including one by the Manics, which they play on Radio X, but they don’t count!