Who Thinks This Stuff Up?

We have a new car. It is only three months old and has already done two return journeys to England.

It is a Skoda. Who would have thought it? I can remember the time when Skoda jokes did the rounds with the Essex Girl jokes. (How do you double the value of a Skoda? Fill it up with petrol – the Essex girl jokes are not fit material for Grumpy’s blog).

But all those days are past and now it is a byword for reliability and German engineering. As well as all this great engineering, the designers have been at work.

You and I thought that only the Americans have coffee cup holders in their cars. Apocryphal stories suggest that Swiss car salesmen have been known to get very agitated when asked about coffee cups. And now the Skoda has two coffee cup holders, although not of the five litre variety that we had when in the U.S. in 2010.

It has cute useful little spaces for my numerous sets of glasses, so I can look cool, as I get my driving glasses down from the ceiling of the car.

The doors open better than my old BMW, which used to swing back and hit you in the kneecaps.

It has a fancy on-board display, from which you can change the headlights for driving in England, without having to go outside and stick those little pieces of black tape to the lights.

I can attach my (hundred year old version) iPod to the car radio, which I will admit is an obvious feature to have.

There are less obvious features. The car locks itself again, if, having unlocked it, you don’t open a door within 30 seconds. What is even less obvious is why anyone would want this feature. It can be very annoying.

The back tailgate shuts so quietly (fantastic) that everyone has to do it twice to make sure that it is closed properly (not so fantastic).

The piece-de-resistance has to be the Manual. This is now over 200 pages long, proving that this stuff is all too complicated. Our original copy was in German which was too hard to understand. We now have an English version, which is also too hard to understand, proving that it is not the language that is the problem - just the fact that it is 200 pages.

Here is an interesting and annoying little feature. Car radio switches itself to very quiet when the car is in reverse and has to be turned up again. Apparently, this feature is to do with the “Park Assistant”, proving that “Health and Safety” has infected even the German Skoda radio designers. I am reminded of a friend of ours who has a coffee machine which shuts down when it decides it needs to be cleaned. If you have no cleaner, you have to trick it into believing that it has been cleaned. Fancy having to lie to a coffee machine.

On the other, I am told that we even have Bluebooth, encouraging me to use my mobile phone while driving. Hmmmmm.

On the personal entertainment and nervous habit side, you can get the car-key in and out of its holder like a flick knife, which is great. You can fiddle with this all day long, while walking along. I don’t think that this key holder will last too long with me.

Who thinks this all stuff up anyway?

By the way, does anyone know where our spare car key is? 

My Christmas Present List for 2012

Christmas is over, as I complete this blog. The leftovers have been eaten. We are back in Thalwil and the Thank You letters and emails must be written.

Talking about Thank You letters and presents, I have starting making my present list for December 2012. I am never one to be unprepared, and for years now, I have made Christmas Lists for myself. I keep the notes under “25^th December” in my diary, in case you want to look.

This probably sounds very selfish. However, when anyone asks the question, “What you do want for Christmas?”, I just get out my list. Easy, innit.

I am doing people a favour with this. I have been told that the most difficult people to buy Christmas presents for, are those who say that they don’t mind what they have. As I don’t want to be difficult, there is no chance of that happening with me. Ask me what I want, and you are likely to get an item, price and location of purchase. Mercenary or what?

I had thought of publishing a Christmas Present list. I could have used Grumpy’s blog for this, but this might have been even more off-putting than usual.

Actually, I don’t suppose for one moment that you would want to buy me a Christmas present. Do people really want to know what you want, or are they just being polite or making conversation? (“Beano or Dandy annual”, has come highly recommended recently.)

I think that there are alternatives. I could use one of the Wedding Lists with John Lewis, Marks and Spencer or Tesco and change “Wedding” to “Christmas” list. (Why do we always say the plural - “Marks and Spencers” or “Tescos”?) The prices will be published, you could sign up for individual presents, and have them delivered to my house. We could have a “Grumpy’s Christmas Present List” at John Lewis or wherever. I can’t believe that this has not been done yet or has it?

My Thank You letters would be automatically generated by the John Lewis, Marks and Spencer(s) or Tesco(s) website. All labour and brain power saving stuff.

There would have to be a list of items that definitely should not be bought, such as handkerchiefs and socks, except for those extremely silly socks which you would never be seen dead in, without the excuse “I got these for Christmas”, as if this explained “Bad Socks”.

(“Grumpy” socks are the exception. These will be accepted gladly and worn on inappropriate occasions).

Do you think that it would be rude to send out reminders to people who fail to give me a present? Should I run a Black List? A sort of “Name and Shame” List.

In case you were wondering about my 2011 Christmas list, anything that was not reserved by another member of the family, I bought for myself on Amazon at a total cost £25.38. I  am very easy to please.

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I cannot let this occasion go by without some comment about Christmas Newsletters. Now, having been a fully paid up member of the “I can’t believe these people who send Christmas Newsletters”, I have switched sides, am a total supporter of the Christmas Newsletter and was the organiser of the “A Short (but getting longer) Christmas Letter from the Swiss Family Hawker”.

As a good Swiss person, I feel that there should be some standardisation of the format in terms of length, content, font type and size, and number of photographs. There is, of course, the question of whether they should be made mandatory. I shall be submitting these ideas to the European Commission, in case they are short of meaningless Directives, naturally using my 2011 Newsletter as the model.

Finally, I should inform you that I am seriously considering the use of e-Christmas-cards. It will save me the effort of printing the labels. This is a bigger problem than you might imagine, as our printer will not pick up the sheets of labels. However, I haven’t yet worked out how you hang e-cards on the wall with the other cards, but I am working on it.