Additional post for the Top Gear people... Which is most of you

As I just watched the Top Gear old people car episode I thought I would add in some photos of more wonders from Beaulieu (Byoo-lee, or Bow-lee if you are American).

Was seriously very cool to see some of these in the flesh and experience for myself the genuinely appalling quality of the workmanship. In saying that, there is a lot of adventure packed into these vehicles when you think about what they have done!

'Reliant 2'... The spare one... Estimated value £2.3 million -

                                              

The three wise cars... Estimated value, £2.3 million each

                                                   

Two of the India cars... After they mounted them on plinths then got told they couldn't leave them in India... Estimated value, £2.3 million

              

                                             

The Hindustan Ambassador from the World Taxi Shootout... Estimated value, £2.3 million

The rocket ski jump Mini, 24hr BMW and Soccer Swift... Estimated valu... You know...

                                              

                  

The obligatory audio visual presentation - "we really wish we could be at Beaulieu to deliver this narrative in person, but frankly we couldn't be bothered" 

                              

Nissank (the one that made it to France), Dampervan MkII and Herald yacht

 

                                       

                                 

S-class camper interior

Lotus Excel Submarine, Hovervan...

                   

                                               

Two surviving campers... Estimated value... Yes, £2.3 million

    

The Cop Cars

                                  

The actual zeppelin camper and old people car

                   

                                                   

Vietnam Vespa & Captain America... I want to recreate that trip one day!! Plus upside down and right way up double decker race cars...

              

                                             

Off road mobility scooters and rail Jag

                                             

The DIY limos

                                                   

And yes.... The immortal Hilux and Hammerhead Eagle iThrust!!!!

          

                                                  

Actual reasonably priced Kia and Supermarket hot hatch...

                   

And of course the Klaas Dominator once more to round it all off... Estimated value... £2.3 million

                                

A privilege to be permitted to photograph so much automotive greatness... Truly humbling

So, impressions... it must be time to list a few pros and cons

The UK... not a bad sort of place... as we regretfully near the end of my tale of yet another international sojourn, let's see what we have concluded so far...

LIKING –

- London – large, busy, lots going on, interesting, historic, plenty on offer for any mood or tastes

- People in uniform wearing funny hats

- Wildlife and nature. Except the only badgers I saw were roadkill. I was promised badgers. And the moles were hiding. Did see a fox in London though

- Cheese... any country with good dairy is my kind of place

- Cider... also "Soy-dur"... and cheap whisky and spirits for that matter

- Ales and beers, when refrigerated (sorry, I know I had the argument several times, but you are not going to convince me warm beer is a good thing… I am willing to bet ‘room temperature’ is ACTUALLY supposed to refer to drinking beer in winter when your castle is near freezing inside… people also claim red wine is supposed to be served at ‘room temperature’ which is BS, especially when it is summer and +25C)

- Pubs – plentiful and full of character, many very nicely updated, others very nicely left original

- Friendly locals - characters aplenty.

- Old stuff – plenty of. Old places. Old buildings. Old everything. Fascinating, scenic. What we call 'antiques' they call 'stuff we have lying around the place'

- Plentiful European wine. The only thing France does right.

- Aston Martin

- The weather!!!

- Fish n chips

- Food in general, pretty good. Local produce etc. Seafood. Wood pigeon!  

- Trains and tube – efficient and handy... when they are working right. And not ridiculously packed.

- The countryside and coast... rather lovely, quaint, charming, green
- Motorways - good when they are there

- Heathrow was fine, although apparently that is not always the case
- Purdey guns... as in the brand... Although they are also purdy...
- Accents... well, the UK ones. Funny and charming, although I still can't really pick one from another


NOT LIKING –

- London – full of lots of people you would rather not hang around, too spread out, expensive, busy

- Radio - rubbish. DJs on popular stations are possibly even worse and more inane than ours, if that is possible.
- Whinging Poms... they do it as home as well. Not all of them mind you, but some just love it. I listened incredulously (while taking my endless photos) as a group of half a dozen of them stood next to THE AUBURN at BEAULIEU and whinged to each other about their accommodation for about 20 minutes. I kid you not. About half of that time was complaining about the tea... also "There isn't even a chair to sit in to watch television... if you want to watch television you have to sit on the bed!"

- Drivers in general... enough said. (Although it was claimed the bad ones were “probably mostly from the EU”…)

- Unfriendly locals (most of them “probably from the EU” also apparently)
- The COFFEE!! BLEH!! SORT IT OUT!!!

- Trains and tube – flipping pricey, crazy busy at times

- Train and tube weirdos – plenty of

- Posers and the tryhard ‘fashionable’ – i.e. most of the people in certain parts of London

- And of course Hipsters. A worldwide disease which must be eradicated

- Countless tossers in German cars and black Range Rovers (Not saying only tossers drive them, just saying that in the UK, mostly tossers drive them. With notable exceptions of course)

- Cars, the ones on the road that is... generally boring. Except in certain parts of London we eventually found, where it is all Ferrari and Aston

- Food – finding cheap healthy food on the move is hard. Although nothing like as bad as the US of course.

- Fresh meat - flipping pricey. Tasty though.

- Shopping – not cheap in any way shape or form for anything you would want to bring back. Although in fairness I didn't dedicate much time to trying to shop properly.

- Good cheap accommodation also hard to find at times. (Okay actually pretty much everything was pricey really. Probably not so bad for normal day to day stuff.)

- Snobby rich w*nkers with no manners (some of whom seemed to think people should step to one side to give them right of way on the footpath, and found themselves mistaken)… although most of these allegedly foreigners also… *coughFrenchcough*
- B-roads and roundabouts. Mindnumbing. And no views due to endless hedgerows.
- It is a LONG way from some parts of the world. Maybe plan a stopover if you can get one somewhere nice. Especially if flying on a rubbish airline.


Fair to say that despite my gripes the pros well outweigh the cons though... Endlessly fascinating, certainly a place that needs more time spent... much much more time.

Rant alert... Yep, Malaysia Airlines...

Yes, you knew it was coming... It's your turn.

Now I don't claim to know a lot about much, but I do know something about quite a bit. And while I am no fatcat bigwig First Class dweller, and nor do I always ride in Business Class, my boarding pass does have 'Frequent Flyer' printed below my name, and therefore, unlike the fickle folk up the front or upstairs, who can most likely afford to fly whatever airline they feel like with no particular allegiance, I am the sort of passenger that your average airline really needs to attract, and retain. I mean that is the entire reasoning behind airpoints and frequent flyer programs to begin with... Incentives to be loyal. Return customers. Offering something to the people who will keep coming back and spending money, which keeps your airline flying. So you would THINK a company like, say, Malaysia Airlines might be taking an interest in that sort of thing about now. You would think. But, to date, the sum total of my 'incentives to come back' has been one nice ground crew lady giving me an exit row seat so I could actually sit without ridiculous discomfort for some of my twelve hours in the air (and, I will add, she was not Malaysian, nor was it in Malaysia). In fact having now taken a few flights, especially post-disasters, I have established Malaysia Air really apparently could not care less about the 'frequent flying' customer. Which is why it is also interesting sometimes to go places and use services without telling people that you also write for travel magazines in your spare time. 

On that note, Malaysia Airlines, some bullet points to consider looking at -

- Your ground staff are generally surly, disinterested, borderline rude and largely unpleasant to deal with. 

- Your cabin staff are not a lot better. Adequate at best, largely absentee, increasing less pleasant if they have to do anything outside required duties. Most of the time just not paying attention. Hosties who offer half the passengers water then run out and forget come back and give water to the rest of the aisle... Hosties, for that matter, who mostly hide in the galley and gossip with the curtains shut. Loudly. Constantly. While passengers are trying to sleep.- Your saving grace is the A380 which makes even rubbish flights less painful, but then again half the rest of your fleet probably shouldn't even be in the air. Oh look, how quirky, ashtrays in the armrests... 'Antique' is not a term you want to hear used when people are getting on a plane and looking around. And then people can't open the toilet door because the words are worn off it...

- On that note, I shouldn't have to revert to my aging smartphone for a better viewing experience than my entertainment screen. In this day and age it should not look like a Sega Mega Drive. Or even worse,  a tiny, decrepit CRT television with bad reception.

- STILL on that note... Your in flight entertainment selection is appalling. Listing the same movies under 'Comedy' and 'Drama' does not instantly double your movie selection... And last I checked, Disney cartoons did NOT qualify for 'Comedy', 'Drama' AND 'Family' categories. Nor is Finding Nemo a drama. Or Toy Story. They found Nemo. It ended up ok. I forget what happened in Toy Story but pretty sure most of them lived. And get some movies that were released less than four years ago. 

- Your music selection is worse. I like a wide variety of music, and I found only about half a dozen albums out of over 200 that I either hadn't heard or could stand to listen to. One of those was a 25 year old REM album for goodness sake.

- On the Frequent Flyer topic... Upgrade some passengers for crying out loud. It costs you next to nothing. Even just to use up the spare seats, you don't have to feed them the good stuff You already make a fortune out of the people who pay for First and Business. When people get upgraded they come back. Guarantee it. At the very least tell your flipping check in staff to try not to not to sneer at customers when they ask if there is something as basic as an exit row available... Or, failing that, an aisle seat... when they have actually gone to the trouble of checking in early but your staff just can't be bothered to try to do it for them. Repeatedly jam me in the middle of three or five seat blocks when I specifically request not to be, and I will tell you where to stick your airline.

- Try to find some food that does not make gas station cuisine look appetising. I don't care where in the world you are, if you are paying good money for food it should be something you WANT to eat, not something you just HAVE to eat. I know I can get an awesome meal off a street vendor's cart in Kuala Lumpur for pocket change, yet I give you £1300 and you, with all your squillion dollar jet airplanes, give me food that makes me want to chew on my seatbelt instead. Other airlines can manage. The food I have eaten on Malaysia Air recently is of such a standard that if you bought it at a supermarket from the frozen meal section for $5 and took it home and microwaved it, not only would you feel ripped off, you would also throw it away rather than eat it.

- And get some wine that costs more than three ringit a bottle. And tell the staff to pour a decent sized drink from your miserly spirits selection once in a while. Some people like a drink or two on a flight, an egg cup is not going to do it. Nor is it going to put people off drinking. It is going to put people off your airline. Passengers change carriers for that sort of thing. 

- How about not putting connecting flight departures on your OWN AIRLINE so shortly after the previous arrival that the only way people can make the connection is for dozens of passengers to rush madly across the terminal to get to the next flight, which has to depart late anyway because the bags take so long to transfer over?? Telling people who have just sat through a decidedly avergage 14 hour flight that they now have 20 minutes to find their way all the way across the terminal and through security again before the gates close on their next 12 hour flight is not a way to endear them to you.

I won't go on, although I could. You only have to get two or three of a whole list of things right to be a passable airline these days. Getting pretty much everything wrong is not going to help. Especially not when you are fighting for your existence. Maybe the staff have just given up, who knows. Government control looms, maybe there is just no call to maintain standards. Having the cheapest fares is a big selling point, but you have to look at who you are attracting and how sustainable it will actually be in the long run. And what reputation you want. I have not been on many major international flights on an aircraft only one third full... Not a good sign folks.

Cutting costs is well and good but if you are driving away customers then you are on a fast track to nowhere. When I am reaching into my own wallet to pay for flights I often like to keep it cheap and cheerful. I maintain the money is better spent when you get there than on the journey. And hey, flying lower priced carriers keeps me in touch with 'the people'... So when I will actually consider paying a reasonable amount more to avoid flying with an airline, then you have a problem. That puts you right up there with Royal Brunei and Chinese domestic carriers... And seeing how well Malaysia's competition are doing on similar routes, I think a lot of other people are thinking the same way.

It has been said that in order to survive, Malaysian Airlines will have to cut back on full sized airline services and start competing as a budget Asian carrier. From what I have seen recently I think they are already operating as a budget carrier, they are just trying to charge as much as a real airline.

More in old Londontown

By then it was Friday and we had much to do around the place. However we woke a little hazy for the first time after a good night out in town and everything was a little bit slow to get moving. We eventually got dressed up in some nice duds and were back on the train and tube and ended up in town. We did some wandering including taking in the Tower of London (from the outside) and Tower Bridge etc. 

         

We decided to leave the full Tower tour for another time as we didn't have time to do it justice, but mostly I wanted to get along and get some photos of the World War One commemoration they are setting up, which is really something else... to mark the centenary of the First World War an army of volunteers are filling the Tower moat with 888,246 large porcelain poppies, one for each life lost by the British in the war. Words can't do it justice, but then neither can my pictures really... 

         

                                                      

            

Each poppy made individually and assembled and planted by hand, one at a time, the installation taking several months to complete. Truly an amazing and deeply moving tribute. 

We also found our way to Knightsbridge (what great names they have for places) where we dined at some restaurant or other I think called Breakfast owned by Charlton Heston (Plant of the Apes guy? Who knew he did food?)... oh no wait it was called Dinner, and it was run by some bloke Heston Blumenthal. Apparently it's a thing.

No photos of food were taken (not really that kind of place) but it was a jolly nice feed, so much so I will make mention without getting all foodie (side note, we had a book in one of our pub rooms called 'The Iconoclast's Guide to Foodies' which was pretty funny). I liked it for the fact the meals are taken from English recipes from throughout the ages so for entrées we had one called Meat Fruit which is based on something from the 1500's and Rice and Flesh which is from 1390 (who knew food was that good 600 years ago?) and then for main I had (surprise!) Spiced Pigeon from 1780 and my companion had Chicken Cooked with Lettuces from 1670. Dessert was Tipsy Cake from 1810 (which you have to order at the start cause it takes them 45 minutes to make) and Brown Bread Ice Cream c.1830. Have a Google if you feel like it, it all looked as good as it tasted. 

We retired rather too well fed and wined, after two rather good restaurant meals in one day, having also stepped out with our hosts... We have, it's fair to say, had a lot of good food and drink on this trip, but hey even if you are not mad about flash food you do have to treat yourself now and then... Thus it was then the weekend...

The lighter side of Malaysia Airlines...

You may think I was about to make some jokes in poor taste there about certain events, but I am not. I am in fact talking about the way that Malaysia Airlines make flying fun again and are a joy to travel with. Oh no wait, that is not actually even remotely accurate. More on THAT later. But we did find humour in a couple of things on our travels from home a couple of weeks ago that I have just now remembered to write down. 

At one stage, having exhausted all the interesting options on their 1980's entertainment system in less than one flight (doesn't THAT bode well for the several other long LONG flights still to come!!?), I ended up watching several episodes of some American show call 'The 100' (is this still a thing? Was it ever? I never heard of it... But then I never heard of a lot of things). Anyway I figured five episodes at forty minutes each might take up some of the endless days I had to sit on the plane... So I found 'The 100' is about people 150 years or something like that in the future when Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war and the only people live on a space station (called The Ark... Clever!!) but The Ark is running out of air and other such things so they send 100 teen (of course!.. Oh wait, did I mention it is 'Based on a book'!!!) convicts down to see if Earth is inhabitable (Really? That's the best they can do? They live on a space station!!! In space!!!)... And, without giving too much away, of course they land in a forest, because clearly they blew the set budget on the space station, and then they have to explore and they get a bit 'Lord of the Flies' and there are mysterious bunkers and a weird killer fog (hmm, sound familiar?) and mutants and (spoiler!) survivors, and intrigue and drama on a earth and in space. Oh and lots of crap writing and bad acting. And the main characters are the privileged, good, smart, practical blonde girl who wants to help everyone and be civilised, and her opposite, the wild, sorta ethnic looking, wrong-side-of-the-tracks badboy with a chip on his shoulder who wants the group to live with no rules but who is really sensitive and complex and looks like Lou Diamond Phillips. And his sister who is the free spirited younger dark haired badgirl one who really just wants to be loved by some nice guy. And the black guy who is the banished son of the boss guy on The Ark (how did he end up a convict again??) and might almost be a love interest for blondy cause they were best friends but she hates him cause he got her father executed for trying to reveal the truth about The Ark dying. But black guy dies later anyway. Oops sorry. And then there is the Asian who is good at electronics. And the endearing geek who is really a hero. And the bad-looking guy who is second in charge to sort-of-not-really-bad-guy Lou Diamond Phillips, but SURPRISE is actually the real bad guy, which you kind of guess cause he looks bad all the time. Oh and then to complicate the various love triangles there is also the 'reckless' other sort-of-badboy who just runs around being all teenage and reckless and stuff, but looks like a forty year old Johnny Depp/Jack White wannabe. Actually he also looks kind of like Peter DeLuise which makes him a bit incestuously 21 Jump Street somehow now I think about it. Oh and then later there is another sassy smart space walking welder super-technician brown chick called.... Raven! And she also gets involved in the love hexagon. Ah yes. Way to phone that one in whatever TV network was responsibe for it. So anyway I could have written a book on the number of plot holes and flaws in the thing (why do the survivors use spears? 100 years after a global war all the bullets have run out??) but motivation to pay further attention, or even live longer, was running short by then. Thankyou for flying Malaysia Airlines. 

Eventually, while pondering what a blood clot to the brain might feel like,  I found my way into the games section and the Malaysia Airlines quiz game. Witness now some of the educational gems that lie therein.... Play along at home!!

Q. What religion is practised by 83% of the people in India.

  1) Buddhism 

  2) Hinduism 

  3) Islam

  4) Christianism

Did you think it was number 4? Or perhaps some other religion, like Mormanity or Scientologilising? Lucky those Christianismologists are so tolerant... 

Ok, let's try again... How about another one that won't possibly offend anyone

Q. What is the name of the wall where Israeli Jews come and lament over their destroyed country?

  1) The Oliver Wall

  2) The Wall of Tears

  3) The Wall of Shame

  4) The Wailing Wall

Get that one? Ah those funny Jews and their shameful love of walls. Ok next round -

Q. What is the name of the black New York area, north of Manhatten?

  1) The Bronx

  2) The Queens

  3) Harlem

  4) Brooklyn

You know, the BLACK area.. Not because of their love of emo house colours, but because it has all them BLACKS in it. Did you perhaps guess number 2), that parts of New York are in fact full of homosexual coloured people? Ah The Queens, those charming gay black folks...

Ok for the bonus round let's move on from all that fun we had offending people religiously and racially and re their lifestyle choices and go into the entertainment round. Now here's one that I had to think about -

Q. What kind of creature is 'Chewbacca' in 'Star Wars'?

  1) A mutant

  2) A robot

  3) A monkey

  4) A monster

The answer is of course E) 'What the hell are you people talking about?'. (Everyone knows Chewbacca was not any of those things right? Ok, apart from those of you going "What's a Chewbacca?")

And there ends our quiz, I hope we all had fun, and learned something too, cause learning is unportant. And in some way I hope this also helped us to understand a little bit more about people who are different from us, like all those weird different foreign types out there, like Christians and Blacks and Jews and Mutant Robot Monkey Monsters. Which, at the end of the day, are all kind of the same thing really. But maybe, just maybe, deep down, we are all a little bit Mutant Robot Monkey Monster...