Week Thirty-Eight I’m Winding Up The Miles.

My new ride is so much fun that as I threatened, I called up my insurer to increase my car policy’s annual mileage cover to 25,000 a year, just in case! I have cranked ten thousand plus on it since I bought her. She has eaten some bizarre loads. Four dining chairs at a whim when we saw them cheap.. a new table at last to put in the living room, bigger than any the bloke had seen collected immediately by folks who just walked in the door at his farmhouse wood shop. (‘It it’s like an advert for Volvos’ quoth the vendor) And the garden table as well. Although the non-stacking chairs meant a second trip. And the mad Granite pagoda for the cod-Nipponese bit of the back garden I have been playing with. It weighs well over a hundred kilos and while I had help to get it into my boot at the magical Essex garden centre we have been frequenting, I had to wait to get assistance from hench builder geezer (also blessed by the name Adam) before I could get it out of the car. I was worried about the thing and the lid shifting if I lost concentration but the car didn’t give a damn.
I made my first voice-controlled phone call from the OEM system today as well. I called up Ian Iceman Pinder and was close enough by en route to my garage, to pop in and cheer him up a bit. SUCH a bad idea to see an ex’s Instagram account. Especially when they get wed.. ouch. I gave him a hug and suggested he emigrate to Las Vegas.
This week, the news is all about the Frankfurt Motor Show. Clarion and Pioneer are there, as are all the car makers that matter. Jon Walsh, who used to be a magazine reporter at Max Power and was called Proby since he was new, is now a crucial cog at Kia Cars, has taken the wraps off a brand new car today – the end game of a two year project as he described it.

Bob Hobson’s funeral was the best attended I have ever seen. It meant reconnecting with folks I hadn’t met in years. Like Paul Richardson, who was also pleased yet sad to see Simon Breach, Mean Street Cruise promoter, with me. I went to collect Simon and he couldn’t find his keys before leaving the house. The three minutes we used up looking, meant that as we arrived at the last road junction before the crematorium, we were in time for the cortège to appear in the road opposite and we fell in behind the honour guard of fully attired sports cyclists from his club.
I ended up sat next to Babs, Barry’s mum, in the chapel. I so wanted to hug her.
Barry was Bob’s best mate from school. The ‘˜B’ in BBG after Bob. As he carried his best friend in his last piece of woodwork, as one of six coffin-bearers, up the aisle of the chapel, Barry was stroking the side of the casket with his thumb, unconsciously, as though soothing his friend, to let him know it was going to be OK. It was bloody heart rending.
I have been worried that Prestige would be in trouble, for the same reason as I wanted to do a speech at the funeral – but so few would have known me. So I didn’t ask.
For Bob had EARS. Golden ones, trained ones that could tell and analyse and then suggest technical fixes and improvements by translation to tech-speak. And as the video I made outside, before and after the ceremony shows, we still have legends walking amongst us and thus Prestige still have some Golden Ears. They belong to Paul Richardson, who has been with them again a while. They will still be able to get that top end human listen-by-an-utter-expert, thank god.
Better crack on, this is late and I have the dentists’ tomorrow!
Drive carefully, enjoy your tunes, don’t get nicked.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor!