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In the early years of this site I had a lot of spouting off to do on a regular basis, and these comments were once splashed across the home page and elsewhere. They eventually ended up being poked away here, where this page now acts as a log of all my previous ramblings. Note that there may be the odd comment that some will find exceptionally cynical, twisted or mildly rude. Well, I hope so anyway.

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2000-04-12
I've just eaten a whole pineapple, and all the acid has taken almost half my tongue off. (Just thought you'd like to know). Actually, I've noticed that Kiwi Fruit do the same when they're sharp. I might start a sister website called 'Fruit that remove half your mouth'.

2000-06-09
It is my birthday. Collect 10 pounds from each visitor! Next week I'll win second prize in a beauty contest.

2000-06-11
Somebody once told me that they'd never make CD-ROM drives faster than 32-speed. This was because they would spin out of control, and if the tray ejected accidentally the CD would take off, fly across the room and slice your head off. I've just purchased a 52-speed drive. Does this mean it will dismember me and place my limbs in a drawer, before jetting to Norway for a conference on peach transportation methods?

2000-06-18
Where have all the French gone? Despite the focus of this site being on an undeniably French car, not one of you smarmy lot have signed my guestbook yet. Perhaps you're too busy thinking you're going to win Euro 2000. (Or perhaps you've got better things to do than read this rubbish).

2000-06-21
This week's rambling is a moral dilemna. I've got a little garden spider nested on my passenger side window. Every day it spins a perfect web, then I drive off and it gets blown to pieces. Somehow, the poor spider survives and spins the web again exactly as before, only for me to shatter its dream home each and every time. This has gone on for weeks now. Do spiders have a short memory span? What if it's a lucky spider? Should I place it on the grass verge and risk upsetting it, or leave it be and endanger its life over and over again? Needless to say I can't sleep at night for such unsettling thoughts. It's issues like this which divide the nation.

2000-06-28
I was delighted the other day when I checked my counter stats and found that I'd had a visit from some US secret service domain or suchlike. Of course it may be entirely innocent; some poor serviceman with nothing better to do. I like to think it was more suspect, like they were spying in case this site becomes too popular and I start some cult religion and take over the world. They probably picked up on the phrase 'assassinated by the secret service' on my History page. So if I construct a meaningless sentence such as 'US army spy assassinate president kill plot conspiracy cult Bruce Forsyth bomb nazi top secret intelligence power god', I'll probably have at least wasted their time. By the time you read this, I'll have 'mysteriously disappeared'.

2000-07-05
I looked up the precise meaning of incestuous in the dictionary, and it is this: 'having relationships restricted to a particular group or organization.' Does this mean all monogamous sex is incestuous?

2000-07-12
Continuing last week's theme, have you ever noticed whenever you try to look up anything in the dictionary, that you can't help but spot loads of rude words along the way? They are always in bold type at the top of the page. The dictionary compilers must have a bit of an in-joke going on to see who can assemble the most pages headed by a rude word. They must try really hard to lengthen and shorten the descriptions of other words just to ensure the rude ones appear at the start and end of pages. Try looking yourself, you'll be amazed (and possibly offended if that sort of thing bothers you). But then who gives a shit?

2000-07-20
An elephant. A momentous. An octopus. A wonderful. An opportunity. A pencil. An historic.... An historic??? Bollocks to that!

2000-07-28
Here in Britain, the government has been planning new laws that would allow all electronic communications to be intercepted in order to protect national security, meaning all emails could be read, even if encrypted, all ISPs would have to install new equipment at their own expense - providing a direct link from their servers to security headquarters - and the whole ethos of the Internet being an open, uncensored community would be replaced be the fear of a big brother society. I have an easy deterrent if these laws are passed. If everyone continually uses suspect language in their communications and on any published web material, the security services will at least be overloaded with crap to sift through every day. This isn't a total solution, but having been bombarded with worthless leads wasting their time and money, it might just cause a government rethink.

2000-08-05
I was so bored this week I sent this story to my local paper, the Manchester Evening News, and to my horror they were so desperate they actually printed it in their Postbag section. Now you can read it for yourself....

After shopping at Asda in Trafford Park, Manchester, I was tempted by their 79p per gallon fuel price, so I pulled into the petrol station. There were about 10 lanes, each with 2 sets of pumps, but they were all occupied. So I waited a minute, and then one of the end lanes became free so I drove in. Having stuck the nozzle in the car, I waited, then realised it was some kind of pre-payment pump.
- 'Insert card', it said, so I put my Switch card in.
- 'Checking card', it said, so I waited a while more. Then, having removed my card and requested a receipt, the pump was turned on and I filled up a fiver's worth. Then it prompted me with:
- 'Fill 'n' save - yes/no?' What's fill 'n' save? I pondered. I looked over the pump but there was no explanation. How on Earth do I know? So, after another minute, it gave up on me and said:
- 'Printing receipt'. I waited another minute and it said:
- 'Out of paper'. So I had to go into the shop and queue for a couple of minutes, then wait whilst the assistant wrote a receipt on a bit of paper. Ten minutes after entering the garage, I was ready to drive off, at which point I noticed the sign above my lane:
- 'Fast Lane', it read. Hmmm.... progress, I thought.

2000-08-12
It's actually getting quite tedious having to think up something pointless to say each week. Such to the 'point' that, along with the forthcoming reorganisation of parts of this site, these comments have now been relegated from the home page to this remodelled History section, and have been renamed 'Today's Pointless Comment', which is even more pointless because they won't be updated every day, just as often as I can be bothered. Car-related comments will appear on the Rants page in the Articles section. I hope this statement has been the most pointless yet.
Update November 2003: Sorry, but I'm bored with my own pointless ramblings and am too busy to update this page so often. Subsequently, these comments are being nudged around the site yet again to this dark recess in the Rants section. I think they belong better in here though.

2000-09-02
Unlike my usual cynical spiel, I just thought I'd put in a recommendation for a film I just went to see, called Timecode. It's the one with the screen split into 4, which may sound like a nightmare, but it soon becomes pretty easy to follow. This film was faultless. The acting was superb, and most of it was improvised, as the actors had a basic outline story to follow but the rest was up to them to interpret, which led to nuances that would otherwise have been omitted in a structured film. It was shot digitally in four continuous takes, each lasting 93 minutes, and is unedited. Characters cross over from one screen to another, and the sound mix draws you in to the key scenes. I could go on forever, but you'll just have to see it for yourself. It can't quite beat Being John Malkovich for this year's best film, but it certainly scores a well-earned 9 out of 10 for its originality. As for Leslie Mann and Saffron Burrows, well.... all the more reason to see it. I'll stop dribbling.

2000-09-11
Tomatoes in sandwiches.... for god's sake, whoever decided this was a good idea? I don't dislike tomatoes per se, although I only really use them as cooked ingredients, but when I eat a sandwich and there's slices of these little blighters inside, it irritates me more than a small camel shuffling its buttocks across my forehead. The thing is, they're not quite crunchy, so you can't bite through them, they're not quite soft, and they're not heavy enough for gravity to hold them naturally in place in the sandwich. So with every bite, a whole ring of tomato drags itself into the wider world, pulling half the other contents with it, forcing you to either furiously try and bite through it at a pre-bread-departure stage, which is never going to happen, or it hangs attractively from your mouth, just at the point where a conversation has focused on you and everybody awaits your answer pretending they haven't noticed it, or you have to use your hands continually to open the sandwich, and extract or reinsert bits to avoid the former catastrophe. It just doesn't work, this vegetable/fruit should be taken out of service and sent to work on a kibbutz. Next week, aubergines.

2000-10-20
'Money: a sphincter stain on the fresh duvet of utopia.'

2000-11-22
Yes I've seen it! (That advert on the telly). Here in Britain, there's a commercial on TV for some insurance company (boo!) with a Renault 4 in it. Probably the only brief bit of publicity the car's received here for a long while. But I'm undecided as yet whether I really like the R4 being used and abused for the interests of some corporation, especially if it makes the car all trendy amongst the same type of tossers who go around souping up Beetles and saying 'sorted' all the time. I hate everything.

2000-12-31
Top 10 most overrated, rubbish bands of all time:
10. Toploader
9. Texas
8. UB40
7. Manic Street Preachers
6. Genesis
5. Bon Jovi
4. Kulashaker
3. Radiohead
2. R.E.M.
1. U2
Apologies to the countless others I've missed out.

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2001-01-23
Just for anyone who's remotely interested, and for the purpose of feeling slightly smug, I wish to point out that the counter figure on the home page only represents the number of 'actual' visits to this site, rather than the total number. The difference being that the vast majority of sites you come across on the Internet show the total number, which includes hits when someone browsing the site returns to the home page, even later on in a session having visited sites elsewhere. My counter setup takes this into account and eliminates these false figures from the statistics, and also does not include my own visits. So, having viewed the total visits when logging in to my account, I can tell you that the overall number of page views is approximately 135 per cent of the 'actual' number (i.e. if the counter says 3000 the total number is likely to be about 4000). Of course many other websites fiddle their counter completely.
Update autumn 2003: I don't think this is necessarily true anymore, since I changed the counter. So much for my smugness!

2001-03-01
Whatever happened to Fry's Five Centres chocolate bars? They were my favourite. Hmm, best stop here, we don't want to get into one of those reminiscent discussions about long lost sweets like Texan bars and Banjos.

2001-03-23
Special message: It's not often you see Renault 4s featured on TV here in the UK, but whilst sitting up through the night preparing some things to put on this site, I've just watched a short drama with an R4GTL in it. The registration number was B164PFX and it was a nice aqua blue colour. The name of the programme was 'Occasional Strong' and it was on Channel 4, Friday 23rd March at 3.05am. If you are the owner of this car, or you know who is, please get in touch.
Update 2011-05-06: A whole decade after my original viewing, I have now located this video on the Internet (click on image, right), and am surprised to note that it features a pre-Bond Daniel Craig.

2001-05-31
It's time I had another rant about tomatoes. But this time it's the tomato tops that worry me. Go and buy a tin of chopped tomatoes. What do you find? Umpteen tomato tops, that's what. You could expect the odd one or two but not a whole tin-full. This is a rip off, and it's horrible. Obviously, I don't mean the green bits that look like spiders, but the hard stem bit near the top. You don't buy a loaf of bread only to find all crusts inside, or a '70s compilation album and find it's all Gary Glitter. I think there's a secret mission to encode brainwashing propaganda inside the tops, and they're distributing them en masse so as to take over the world. Somewhere, Lord Chief Tomato Top is planning to invade Poland. Mushrooms: don't think you've got away with it, you're next on my veg-agenda.

2001-07-20
RECIPE: VEGETABLE STEW THING. (I know this works because I did it the other night and it was fantastic).
Ingredients (to serve 2):
Accompaniment: 2 medium potatoes and a half a swede, boiled and mashed to form base. Main dish: half a swede (chopped); 2 carrots (chopped); 1 medium onion (chopped); 1 red pepper (chopped); 2 cloves garlic (finely chopped or crushed); 1 small tin of chopped tomatoes; 1 tin of black eye beans (drained); 1 pack of Vege Mince (optional); 1 pint stock; Herbs and spices (rosemary, thyme, cayenne pepper, etc.).
Method: Shove it all in a pan and cook it.

2001-11-17
What's going on here? I haven't had anything pointless to say for months, that means all my comments must have been pointed. Well here's some more pointed words: Salford City Council are a bunch of arseholes. You'll learn more and why at a later date. Whatever you do, don't ever move to Salford, it's the most rubbish, grim, depressing and miserable place on Earth, and is run by a bunch of mean, spiteful and inept bureaucratic idiots who genuinely deserve a good dose of anthrax. The only reason I'm still living here is because I'm stupid. I sincerely hope that one day after I move away, somebody drops a bomb on this place and lays it to rest. You'd have more fun in Greenland. (No, you really would). The only good thing you can say is that this website wouldn't be here if this city were any better, as I'd surely be having a good time doing something more useful. Can you tell I'm fed up? Someone please buy me the teddy bear, that'll cheer me up, I can't afford it myself. God, that's desperate, I can't even afford to buy my own teddy bear, that's Salford for you. Argh!

2001-12-03
100 Greatest Number 1 Singles? What a load of crap! From the moment Rock Around The Clock came in at a bleak number 97 and was subsequently followed by a higher scoring I Should Be So Lucky by Kylie Minogue, I knew this evening sitting in front of the telly was going to be a pointless exercise if it wasn't soon followed by shouting and a brick being thrown at it. (People outside the UK won't know what I'm talking about, so just to summarize, we have to endure absurdly compiled Top 100 or Top 10 lists of everything on our TV screen every Saturday night, which are accompanied by clips representing these great moments, then ruined by irritating voiceovers from B-list, washed up celebs desperate to make some clichéd, unspontaneous comments about them for a quick buck). Why don't they do a program called 100 Greatest Number 1 Singles Not Largely Judged by Ignorant Fat-Arsed Beefburger-Munching Imbeciles Of The Great Thickie British Public Who Can't Remember Anything Beyond The Last 4 Weeks Let Alone The Last 40 Years? Thank Christ that Robbie Williams' Millennium didn't make the top 10. After all, having blatantly ripped off a far superior song in true Robbie style (in the name of You Only Live Twice, with Nancy Sinatra), he surely deserves a kick in the teeth more than a number one hit. And I don't care if Sophie Ellis Bextor is daughter of Blue Peter or son of God, her music is rubbish, she's a completely inane, annoying, middle class vacant tart and anyone who thinks different can have a fight with me on top of a Renault 4.

2001-12-23
Oh well, seeing as it's Crimbo time I guess I ought to put something uplifting and happy here for a change. So here's a quick recommendation: If you haven't seen Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring yet at your local multiplex cardboard box-full of tedious overpriced snacks and assorted inbred audience members (you see, I find it impossible to completely avoid being cynical), then I suggest you excuse these detractions and hop along to see it. I'd never read the books, and knew nothing about LOTR, so went along with a completely fresh mind, and was overwhelmed by it. Most of those who have read the book seem to be agreed that the film is true enough to the spirit of the book and has been largely well handled and brilliantly visualised by director Peter Jackson. At three hours long, and being only part one of a trilogy, it may put some off but I urge you to see it now on the biggest possible screen you can. The small screen version just won't be as effective. It truly is an epic film that will surely go down in history as such, and its status is hopefully assured considering the two sequels have already been made, as they were filmed at the same time over an arduous 18-month period (so basically, if Christopher Lee pops it soon, he'll still be in it, which is reassuring). It is of course a popular film, but I'm not exactly sure you can call it mainstream. A word of warning: I really don't think it would be suitable for most children under twelve. If I'd seen it at that age I'd have been quite freaked out, as the film contains many sinister images and has a dark edge. It is full of overly cinematic moments and somewhat contrived scenes that we've seen before, but you have to forgive all this because, of course, LOTR dates back to the 1940s and much writing and film production has drawn influences from it including, notably, Star Wars. And if there was ever a film that these kinds of scenes were designed for, it is this. It may not be one of the best films ever, but it is certainly an epic that you'll want to have experienced and to remember for ever more. And don't forget, this is coming from the mouth of one of the most miserable cinema-goers around.

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2002-01-22
It's not far off now. The new version of Renault 4-Play will be launching soon! Tonnes of new stuff will appear when the site is fully transferred to the new webspace provider.

2002-02-10
Some of you poor souls in Britain may remember a ridiculous song that actually made number 1 back in the 1980s. It was called the Chicken Song, and was produced for the popular Spitting Image programme, which was a weekly puppet parody of current affairs. But how many of you remember the notable lyrics below?
.... Hold a chicken in the air,
stick a deck-chair up your nose
Buy a Jumbo-Jet,
and then bury all your clothes
Paint your left knee green,
then extract your wisdom teeth
Form a string quartet,
and pretend your name is Keith.
Skin yourself alive,
learn to speak araphahoe
Climb inside a dog,
and behead an Eskimo
Eat a Renault 4,
wear salami in your ears
Casserole your gran,
disembowel yourself with spears....

2002-06-06
I don't know what's been the matter with me of late. I've lost the energy to keep spouting off like I used to. Here's a short one though: Have you noticed when there's a world cup, or the olympics, or any similar event, all these companies are desperate to get their name or products splashed around as being the 'official' this that or the other of the tournament? Who gives a toss whether they are or not? I mean, it's so absurd now that we have adverts for the offical world cup toilet roll, the official brand of olympic kipper, the official breed of world cup piglet.... whatever next? Well, I'm cashing in on the act as from now. I'm declaring these pages the official Renault 4 website of the world cup. Illegal I'm sure, but then I never specified which world cup....

2002-08-05
Following my last title as the world cup Renault 4 website, I decided to declare this the official R4 website of the Manchester Commonwealth Games 2002. Well, not any more it isn't. Did you see that absurdly overindulgent closing ceremony? What a load of bollocks! I'm no royalist, but I actually feel sorry for the Queen for having to sit there and endure that mountain of crap, which overran horrendously and offered us all the spoils of the world's worst nightclub on a stage in the middle of a soaking stadium. Having lived in sodding wet Manchester for ten years, I just knew they would end the games with some rubbish like that, which had very little to do with sport for the most part, and more to do with arrogant, bigheaded wasting of vast amounts of money. And just what was the point of all those pictures of half-dead people in the middle, as if they really care? I see that grade-A fat git from Toploader got in on the act, along with a few washed up musical has-beens, not least that old bag from M People who really deserved to have a large haddock wrapped around her face. What a totally misjudged, bloated pool of piddle. I'm so glad to not be a part of that city any more, should otherwise welcoming people I meet around the world in the future shun me for my connection to such a monstrous parade of embarrassing codswallop. I thought I'd lost all my bitterness of late, but this event has revived it once more. I've got nothing against Manchester as a city in general, or the Commonwealth Games as a whole, or the volunteers who performed in the ceremony, but whoever organised this excruciatingly annoying and utterly dreadful finale needs to be buried in the middle of the stadium up to their necks whilst the whole thing is performed around them again, when swarms of youngsters come running in and boot them in the head repeatedly. Then, all the paper lanterns used for the bit with the shining corpse should be rolled up and stuffed into the stadium announcer's smug gob. Tracey Shaw and the other pratt from Coronation Street should simply be executed, skewered and raised up a flagpole, whilst the only good bit in the whole thing - involving the scores of Morris Minors - should be re-worked so as they drive into the arena and flatten Sebastian Coe. Care to disagree? Send me an email, I can't wait.

2002-09-19
Blimey! (I like starting sentences with that word). Renault have really pushed the boat out this time. Their main renault.com website now contains a section devoted to cult cars, on which the R4 sits proudly. There's actually some interesting facts and figures buried in these pages, and some obscure models are listed amidst the car's development. Technical info is presented with basic stats of each of the main variations on the R4, and there are other linked pages with odd pictures and data. Credit to Renault for making the effort on what was once a dull commercial website. See the 'renault sites' page in the Links section.

2002-12-15
Ah well, softie that I am, and seeing as I haven't written anything here for a while, I may as well wish all of you who celebrate such things a happy Xmas and New Year, even if I do say it with a certain degree of insincerity and artificiality. Xmas stopped being exciting for me when I was about twelve, I think. The best Crimbo I ever had was the 1981 'Atari' Christmas, the year when it was the big thing in Britain and everybody had one. My parents bought the 2600 VCS console, and my brother, sister and I each received one game. But I would forever be the butt of family jokes, for whilst my big bruv got Super Breakout, which was a timeless classic and new title of the time, and my sister got the new, trendy in-thing that was Pacman, with which to amaze and amuse her friends, I was landed with that pinnacle of computerised entertainment: Combat. Problem was, this was the standard game that came in the box and so everybody owned it, and everybody thought it was boring. Big bruv and big sis had had money lavished upon them with exciting new games, whilst I had the silly tanks firing shots at each other. This is what led to the endless taunts and smirks amongst my siblings for years to come. I was the pauper of the Atari household. To fully rub in just what a raw deal I'd received, the only time anybody would actually play Combat with me (as it was 2-player only), was when my sister would select the variation where she got to be the three highly maneouvrable small biplanes that zipped around the screen and fired three rounds at a time, whilst I had to be the huge, single, cumbersome great jumbo jet thing that was the size of a cloud and easier to hit than a red cross centre in Kabul. It had a turning circle the width of an athletic track, not to mention the ability to fire one measly round at a time - which invariably ended up disappearing off screen - whilst I suffered hit after hit that sent me spinning around hopelessly. Surely, twenty-one years on I would have got this out of my system? I hope you are now beginning to understand some of the many reasons why I am such an embittered person, and why I decided to write some of the garbage that populates parts of this site.

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2003-01-20
Bienvenue à tout le vous à travers 'la Manche' (un nom bête et inférieur mais je ne dirai pas encore). Je suis désolé pour annoncer que vous pouvez lire maintenant ce site stupide en français - ou au moins des morceaux de toute façon - en plus de la version habituel en anglais. Ah oui, la vie ne sera jamais la même encore. J'espère que vous avez beaucoup d'heures heureux en étudiant les pages profonds à l'intérieur de ce site.

2003-05-25
Well, it's unavoidable. I may be finding it hard to muster up much in the way of rants anymore, but I can't be expected to keep shut about the Eurovision Song Contest. Oh yes, I'm one of those saddies who stays in each year on a Saturday night to watch this fiasco, and actually enjoys it. But this year was the funniest of the lot. I've waited so long to hear the immortal words 'Royaume-Uni, nul points', and now it's actually happened, and deservedly so. As if giving our wholehearted backing to some despicable little twat across the Atlantic to go and slaughter people indiscriminately wasn't bad enough, we then decided to arrogantly taunt the rest of Europe with our utter inability to either compose a song that delights in any way whatsoever, or to manage to perform it in a manner that makes it at all bearable. It's moments like this that I love; the rest of Europe slapping us in the face and showing us up for the fools that we are. If only we as a nation took a bit more notice of what other civilised cultures were doing across the Channel, rather than lapping at the feet of a power-crazed administration in the States, we'd be a far healthier society and I wouldn't squirm so much about living here. Right, there, I've done it, my little Iraq bit. I've held back from forcing my views upon readers of this site until now (bar the odd astrological prediction) over this subject, because I really don't think this is the place to discuss such things. Most people come here for a bit of escapism, but something had to be said before I embark on my voyage around Europe and Morocco, else people I meet and introduce to these pages might assume me to be an ambassador for Western imperialist bullshit. Perhaps I'm getting a bit heavy now. I'll go and make myself a camomile tea.

2003-08-08
Big Brother. Lame Academy. Pop Idiot. Rehashed In The USA. I'm A B-List Tosspot Get Me Out Here So I Can Get My Face Back On The Screen. How many more of these crap entertainment shows are they going to pulp down the wires at us? Thankfully, I don't watch any of them, but I can't help catching endless trailers, being bombarded by adverts on billboards and listening to inane conversations between people who had nothing better to do the previous night but indulge themselves in it. I'm sure it's some attempt by MI5 - in league with the BBC and other broadcasters - to brainwash the nation, just to remove any capabilities of individual thought people might have as they sit there chomping on chewy pizza absorbing this subliminal propaganda. I'll challenge anybody who regularly digests this semi-showbiz nonsense: for the next month, fill in your TV guide with the word 'Book' every time one of these programmes is scheduled, and go and find yourself a really good novel, or a few. Switch the TV off altogether or find another place to go, read through the book and see how satisfied you feel at the end of the month. If you don't feel better for it, you probably won't be reading this anyway.

2013-04-08
She's gone, she's gone, the silly old moo. Now I can get on with the life I've been deprived of since 34 years ago. (Yes, worth reviving this page a decade later just for that :)

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