173. Boogling

While making a speech on November 10th 2020 about a possible Corona Virus vaccine, Boris Johnson said this: “We’ve talked for a long time about the distant bugle of the scientific cavalry.” 

You’re probably thinking that there’s nothing particularly noteworthy or memorable in those words but for me, they brought back a long-forgotten memory. 

Hearing the word “bugle” spoken aloud for the first time in 60 years or so, reminded me of something that my friends and I used to do when we were about 14 years old.

I find it particularly important because it is a “New Memory” for me and that’s significant because as far as I can tell, all my memories until now have been what may only be described as “Old Memories”.  

Some nights ago, instead of counting sheep when I couldn’t sleep (which, by the way, doesn’t ever work), I was trying to think of something from the distant past; something that I haven’t thought about since the time it happened.  

In other words, I was trying to bring back, or even to generate for the first time, a long-forgotten memory - something that I have never thought about since it happened.  I failed because everything I thought of was something I always think of when thinking about that topic.  No new memory would come to mind.  

I thought about my schooldays and about the different classrooms and labs in which I was ever taught and tried to remember an event in each one.  For most of them I could remember something that happened there but they were always the same old memories – never anything new.

For fifteen years of my life, I was a frequent passenger on buses in Lowestoft but I can’t think of any aspect or event that happened during any of those bus journeys I made.  

I can remember the stops where I got on and off a bus and I can remember the bus numbers as well as the colours of those buses but I recall absolutely nothing about any bus journey I ever made.  

I only have two memories of my grandfather who died when I was 13.  One is going for a walk with him when I was about five.  He always carried a walking stick and on that occasion, for some reason, so did I.  My other memory is some years later of him standing on the boundary, watching me play in a school cricket match.  

I was with him many times and it is very depressing that I have forgotten everything about those meetings.  I wonder whether my grandchildren will remember anything of me in 60 years’ time.

When batting, I must have been dismissed more than 2500 times and yet, if I try to remember any of those dismissals, it is always the same five or six that come to mind and never any of the others.

I played at hundreds of different cricket grounds over 40 years and for every ground I can remember playing at, I only have one memory.  There are, though, two exceptions.  One of them is Arden Field where my club, Finchley, played and the other is Gerrards Cross, where I have two memories.

I first remember playing at Gerrards Cross in July 1974, not because of the game itself but because it was there that I first heard the word “bonk” used as a synonym for sexual intercourse.

At about three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, I was fielding at first slip when, between deliveries and apropos absolutely nothing whatsoever, second slip asked me how many people in the UK I estimated were bonking at that precise moment.  It is odd that although I had never heard the term before, I knew exactly what he meant by “bonking”.

I also remember playing there on Sunday July 18th 1976.  That was memorable because Alice, my elder daughter, was born the following morning.

It seems that my memory is like an art gallery where the rows of pictures never change.  As with those pictures, my memories are permanent and fixed - until now! 

Thanks to Boris Johnson, I have discovered a memory from long ago and now I remember something that I haven’t thought of for several decades.

When I was 14, all my friends were boys.  I was at school with girls and girls made up at least half of every class I was ever in but I never spoke to any of them.   At that age, my friends and I didn’t talk to girls - but we did talk about them.

When the Prime Minister mentioned the sound of “the distant bugle” the other day, I was transported back to Lowestoft town centre, where my school friends and I would wander about on a Saturday morning.  

As we walked along in a group of three or four, one of us might spot an attractive girl.  

“Look,” he would say and then, putting on as broad a Suffolk accent as possible, would sing out:

“Doo yer think she boogle?”  

Thereupon, the rest of us would chant back in unison:

“Yer bet yer loife she do.”

Then, we would giggle like naughty boys who were slightly embarrassed because they knew they were being smutty.  

I have no idea how “bugle” came into our vocabulary as a precursor to “bonk” but as you know, it never caught on.

172. What are the Chances?

In 2012, the Royal Statistical Society asked 97 MPs a question on the maths of probability.  I don’t know why but possibly it was in the hope that many of them would get it wrong and then we could all scoff and say that the average MP is rather dim.

I am not a mathematician but I suspect that the simplest question of all on probability would be something like, 

“If you spin a coin, what is the probability of getting heads?”

The answer is that there are two equally possible outcomes when a coin is spun; one is heads and the other is tails and so the answer is that the probability of getting heads is ‘one in two’ or, as mathematicians would say, ‘0.5’.

I would say the answer is ‘one in two’.  Surely, ‘one in two’ is a notion that is simpler to understand, than ‘0.5’?  Maybe, this is one reason why so many people are very happy to say, “Maths?  I’m useless at maths.”  

In a piece I posted here in 2013, I wrote that Gwyneth Paltrow, Mariella Frostrup and Ruby Wax all seemed to be quite proud of being “useless at maths”, whereas no one ever says they are useless at English.

Before MPs were asked the probability question, three quarters had said that they felt confident dealing with numbers.  I suppose that means that they felt they were reasonably good at maths and certainly not “useless”.

The question they were asked was, 

“If you spin two coins, what is the probability of them both being heads?”

Despite their apparent confidence, 47% of the Conservative MPs and 77% of Labour MPs  got it wrong.  Are Labour MPs dimmer than Tories?

That thought is not for me to comment upon, although I will say that David Lammy’s performance on the television quiz, Mastermind, makes me wonder.  

He answered “Antoinette” when asked for the married name of the scientist, Marie, who discovered radium.  Then, he told the question master that Henry the eighth was succeeded by Henry the seventh.

The answer to the question that was asked of the MPs is 0.25 or as I prefer to think of it, one in four, as only one of the four equally likely outcomes is two heads.

I had a haircut in the beginning of October which, because of Lockdown, was the first one since February.  

I had been told about Lena, a woman who has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that both she and her clients stay safe from the threat of Covid.  

Her business is 16 miles away but as it was a choice between having my hair cut by either her or Caroline, I chose the relaxing drive to Bedford.

Caroline did cut my hair once when I was bedridden for several weeks in Cayman and she would be the first to admit that she made a quite dreadful job of it.  After it was over, she stood back, surveyed the scene of the carnage she had created and then, by way of both explanation and perhaps an apology, said to me,

“You know, cutting hair is a lot like playing golf.  They are both more difficult than they look.”

Lena is from Romania and as she cut my hair, she talked incessantly.  I mean, she never stopped!  

Like many (most?) people, I hate the tedious, mundane inconsequentialities of the strained haircut-conversation.  I want silence throughout it all and so, whenever a response from me was expected, I either grunted, “Yes” or “No”.

We were ten minutes in when, inevitably, Lena asked what my job had been before I retired.  

“Teacher.” I mumbled.

“So, you went to university.  Which one?”

“Durham.”

“My son is at Cambridge. What ages did you teach?”

“Eleven to eighteen,” I mumbled.

“Ah, to A’ level.  Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“What subject?”

I knew this was coming and so I was ready to tell a lie:

“Maths.”

From past experience, that would shut her up.  When I said I had taught maths, it should have brought the “I am useless at maths” response and conversation would abruptly stop.  It always works at a barber’s or hairdresser’s.

Not this time, it didn’t. 

“Oh, really?  What’s your favourite formula?”

My what?  My favourite what?  What the hell!  I didn’t know formulas had names or people had feelings about them.

“I haven’t got one,” I mumbled.  “They all have a purpose.”

“Well, yes, of course they do but mine is Oilers.”

“Yes, I find that’s a handy one when my car needs a service,” I said, hoping that was a stupid enough response to be amusing.

It clearly wasn’t because Lena just carried on talking about irrational numbers and other things that I didn’t understand at all.  I sat in silence, grunting affirmatively and nodding wisely every now and then.

I tried to change the subject from maths to anything else but I couldn’t because Lena had found someone whom she thought to be a kindred spirit and she wanted to talk maths.

Eventually, she did stop talking about maths and then I heard about her life in Romania where she had been an actuarial analyst (???).   When she arrived in England 13 years ago, her English had been very poor and she had taken up her hobby of hairdressing.  Now, her English is perfect and I think she cuts hair fairly well too.

As soon as I got home, I asked Caroline (who really is a mathematician) to tell me about Oilers formula.  She was very surprised to be asked but told me that it was a formula devised by Leonard Euler (pronounced “oiler”) a Swiss mathematician and it was one of her favourites too. 

She tried to explain it to me but despite its apparent “beauty”, I lost track after about thirty seconds which was at about the same time I lost interest as well and I told her so.

Undeterred, she attempted to revive my interest in formulae by describing the intrinsic and inherent elegance of the formula for the surface area of a sphere but again, she failed.  I am certainly no mathematician.  

Now, I have a problem.  The next time I need a haircut, do I go back to Lena and run the risk of being exposed as the fraud that I am or, do I let Caroline loose on my hair again?   

 

171. Online Disaster

Do other people find shopping on the internet as difficult as I do?  I don’t shop online very often but when I do, something usually goes wrong.

I am not very good at online shopping.  

The first time I ever shopped online was about nine years ago when I tried to buy some wood stain and it was the first time I used Amazon.  It all seemed so easy and I thought that this was to be the future.  All I would ever need again would be a credit card and a computer and I'd be able to buy anything I needed.

The first sign that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I imagined was when nothing had arrived after a week.  After two weeks, I saw that no money had left my bank account and that’s when I gave up and went to Homebase.

Despite that experience, a month later and a week before my granddaughter’s fourth birthday, I went online to buy her a present.

On the evening of the day before the birthday, I rang her mother to see if the present had arrived.  It hadn’t but half an hour later the package came - to my house in London!  

The next morning I was on the road at 7.00 a.m. to drive 140 miles so that Marianne had her present at 10 o’clock.

In March this year, I needed to buy duck food.  I needed it because every morning when I go into our living room, I’m greeted by the sight of between 2 and 8 ducks standing on the step outside the glass patio doors. 

The moment I appear, they become agitated and very noisy and if I don’t get there and feed them before 8 o’clock, the step becomes covered in duck poo.

Ramble

If Kärcher ever decide to run an advertisement for their Home Pressure Washer, they should contact me.  I’d be prepared to testify that nothing is better for removing hardened, sun-baked duck poo than their K-4 pressure washer.

I’ve even got the script prepared for the ad agency: 

“When these little rascals pay me a visit” (gesture towards the group of ducks on the step) “they sometimes forget their manners” (shot of solid duck poo  followed by a kindly smile and a shoulder shrug - a gesture suggesting “what can you do, eh?”)

“The little presents they leave are really hard to remove and I’ve struggled with this nuisance for years - but now (dramatic pause) - I’ve got the problem solved.”  (Close up of a smiling, relieved face)

“The Kärcher K-4 pressure washer blasts away even the most stubborn mess.  Just watch this!” (Shot of the hose in action clearing poo off the steps)

“See that, you scallywags? (smiling indulgently towards the ducks) As clean as it could be, so no harm done.  Now, why don’t you scamps waddle off and have some fun in the pond?”

(Close up shot of an earnest but contented face with the voiceover saying),

When shit happens, Kall for Kärcher

The Kärcher K4.  It’s not shit - it cleans shit

The duck problem is my own fault.  I started feeding them as soon as we came to live here and over the years, they’ve become more demanding.  In the summer, when it was hot and the doors were open, two of them would come in to join me watching the test match on the television.

We get through a lot of duck food and so I buy in bulk.  I usually buy a 12.5 kilogram bag but in February, when I saw a 17.5 kilogram offer on Amazon, I bought it thinking that it would probably last until the end of the year.  

It arrived one Saturday morning and I was rather surprised that it could be posted through the letter box.  I had bought a trial pack of 175 grams!  

Other types of online shopping causes problems.  Cooking for my daughter and her family when they visit us is a nightmare.  

She has coeliac disease and her diet has been free of gluten since she was three.  My grandson has severe allergies to nuts and shellfish.  On top of that, the whole family is vegetarian.

When they last visited, I decided to cheat by buying two gluten-free, vegan pizzas from Waitrose online.

The shopping arrived at the same time as my daughter and they were all starving after a four-hour drive.  I immediately searched through the Waitrose bags for the pizzas.  Oh dear!  I thought they seemed quite cheap when I ordered them and now I saw why.  

They were just pizza bases with no topping at all.  I am not very good at online shopping. 

Recently, it became apparent that it wasn’t possible to alter the temperature of the water coming from our shower.  No matter how much the control lever was moved - whether to try to make the water warmer or cooler - the temperature stayed the same.  It was just about all right but it would have been better if it could have been just a little warmer. 

Brian, my neighbour is a qualified plumber as well as being a qualified electrician and a highly skilled carpenter and tiler.  In every way, he is the perfect neighbour.

He had a look at it for me, fiddled about with it for a time and then told me that we needed a new thermostatic cartridge.  Unfortunately, he was certain that neither Wickes, B&Q or Homebase would stock the one I needed.

That meant I had to search for it and buy it online and I’m not very good at online shopping.  

I needed a Mira Agile Pronta thermostatic shower cartridge.  I found it, part number 1736.704 - sorted!  I was quite proud of myself.

An hour later, Brian came back and asked which thermostatic shower cartridge I’d ordered.

“That’s the wrong one,” he said.  “You need the 1736.703.  The 704 is Single Lever but you need a Double Lever, the 703.”

“Oh yes, of course I do,” I agreed.  “How stupid of me.”

Before I put in the order for the 703, I cancelled 704.  Easier said than done but after about 10 minutes, I was ready to place the new order.

The 703 is £6 more expensive than the 704 but that didn’t matter.  It would be worth it to be able to have a hot shower in the depths of winter.

Three days later, I opened the front door to greet a delivery driver struggling to hold 5 packages.

I am now the owner of three Mira Agile Pronta thermostatic shower cartridges 1736.704 and two Mira Agile Pronta thermostatic shower cartridges 1736.703.  In total, they have cost about £300 and I just hope I can find out how to return those I don’t need.  

I will probably have to ask Caroline for help I suppose.  She is an online shopping expert whereas I, as you may have come to realise by now, am not very good at online shopping.

170. Television Intrusion

I should apologise to those of you who live outside the UK because what follows probably won't mean much to you.  This post is parochial as it is all about our revered, national public service broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation, known as the BBC.  

I’ve mentioned before the dreariness, dullness and irrelevance of our local BBC news programme, “Look East”.  The east of England is such a large area that news about burst pipes in a village that could be 130 miles away, must be of no interest at all to most people in the region.

Nevertheless, on Wednesday evening we were actually eager to see Look East as Caroline hoped there would be an item about the schools in Luton for which she has responsibility.  She had been expecting it for a day or two and so we had recorded those bulletins. 

That was just as well as minutes before the programme began, the phone rang and we missed its start.  The conversation ended quite quickly but so we didn’t miss the headlines and the main item, we went to “Recordings” to watch the programme from the beginning.

There was no mention of Luton and at the end of the news came the weather forecast.  The first words were, “Wednesday will be wet and windy.”  What!!!!

It would appear that we had been watching Tuesday’s bulletin for the second time and until that moment, hadn’t realised.

Is "Lockdown Loopy” a recognised medical condition?

*****

There are a number of characteristics of the BBC that have really irritated or annoyed me in the last year or so.  Its determination to be the ‘wokest’ organisation in the country is driving me bonkers.  Now, I've discovered other aspects of the BBC that are troubling.

Maybe I really am going “Lockdown Loopy” but my irritation at hearing someone saying,  “any time soon” on the BBC television news programmes, is mounting.  

In the same way that I only ever hear the phrase “the here and now” in weather forecasts and never in general conversation, I only ever hear “any time soon” during the news bulletins.

Here are examples of “any time soon” from the past month:

“Remember this?  When people could crowd into pubs and restaurants?  You won’t see that again any time soon.”

“It doesn't look as though that line is going to flatten any time soon.”

“A major hotel chain has warned that up to 1800 jobs could go because there’s little prospect of the industry returning to normal any time soon.”

“For many businesses and organisations, there’ll be no going back any time soon.”

“Is this blustery weather going to end any time soon?”

“This heavy-handed law enforcement is unlikely to end any time soon.”

“OK, let’s find out if it’s going to stop raining any time soon.”

“This amusement park has not been able to open for months and there’s no likelihood of it opening any time soon.”

“Is the weather going to settle down any time soon?”

“BBC research reveals that fifty major companies aren’t planning to have all their staff back in the office any time soon.”

I have never heard “any time soon” said by anyone in everyday conversation but during BBC news bulletins, I usually hear it at least once.  

“Any time soon” is said by newsreaders and reporters when normal people would say, “in the near future” or “imminently”; "for some time"; “in the next few days/weeks”; “before long” or even just, “soon”.  I wish they would stop it.

By the way, there is something interesting about the quotes above.  Even though most are about the impact of the Covid pandemic, our thoughts are always turning to the weather.

*****

Ofcom has reported that the BBC is struggling to engage the younger audience.  That is even though it is doing all it can to attract the politically correct and ‘woke’ Under 30s.  

In a new BBC historical drama series, I have been told that Idris Elba is taking the part of Henry VIII and that Christopher Biggins will play the rôle of Cardinal Wolsey.  Will that be woke enough for them?

At the same time that it’s failing to attract young people, the BBC is losing its primary audience.  Last year, it lost 2% of the age range that is said to make up the BBC’s core audience: people like me.  

I know exactly why those viewing figures are declining and why the BBC is losing £300 million a year in unpaid licence fees.  Is it just me or are their television programmes generally awful at the moment? Cooking, travel, property and antiques are the topics that seem to make up the bulk of its output.  

I should be interested in them.  After all, I enjoy cooking; I’ve travelled; I live in a house and I am very nearly an antique but I find that those programmes are all terribly dull and boring.   Consequently, I do not watch many television programmes and virtually nothing that the BBC offers.  

A programme I record but then watch but only for the first 2 minutes, is an afternoon programme on ITV - The Chase.  It is essential viewing in order to play the game that Caroline and I have created.  

The first thing to happen on that show is the four contestants, whose names are visible in front of them, introduce themselves in turn.  All four will state their name (which we already know), age, occupation and where they are from.  So, the first contestant might say: “I’m George.  I’m fifty-four, a newsagent from Bradford.” 

What Caroline and I do is watch with pen and paper in hand and with the sound muted.  The object of the game is to try to lip read those three unknown facts about each player and a point is awarded for every one you get right.

3 points at stake per player; there are 4 players and so 12 points are available every day; the programme is shown 5 times a week, meaning there are 60 points available in a week.  

Caroline is much better than me at this.   Last week, she beat me 46 - 22.  She often identifies the occupation whereas I never have.  She correctly identified a woman as a “Legal Secretary”.  I thought she was a “Local Sex Worker”.

There can be problems, however:  Should I have allowed Caroline a point for saying a woman was from “Warrington” when it was in fact, “Workington”?  No, you are wrong.  Those two towns are 130 miles apart and in different counties.  Rules are rules and she scored nothing.  

Ramble:

This is a really great game that anyone can play.  If I could think of some way to refine, package and market it, we’d be rich.  I’ve got a name for it: “WALDOE’S TWIN”. That’s an anagram of WILTON and DAWES.

I can imagine someone saying, “Fancy a game of Waldoe’s twin?”

The only BBC programme I watch with any regularity is the 10 o’clock news and recently, I have discovered something that I find troubling.  

I started to make a record of a rather disturbing aspect of the BBC news coverage.  What follows is just 11 days of data.

On August 8th, there was a troubling news item about bullying within British women’s gymnastics.  A former gymnast was interviewed.  Throughout most of the interview, she appeared on screen like this:

Then, for no reason, the picture changed to show her hands:

Why?  Was it so we could see that she had slightly ridiculous false nails?  Then, five seconds after returning to the original shot, this appeared:

OK, so she has false eyelashes too.  Remember that this was on the BBC’s main news bulletin of the day.  It wasn’t a feature on The One Show or a Sports Magazine programme.

On the next day, Laura Gardiner from the Resolution Foundation was interviewed about the effect of Covid pandemic on the labour market.  The BBC news team thought that as well as seeing her like this:

The viewers could see that she has a protruding skin blemish and somewhat over-plucked eyebrows too:

Why?  How does a change of shot to produce an unflattering image, add anything to the information being imparted?

Why do the BBC do it to women and never to men?  Here are some more examples:

August 14th.  Kate Bingham, Chair, UK Vaccine Taskforce. 

August 18th.   Lizzie Harper, the widow of PC Harper.

August 19th.   A woman who, for psychological reasons, can’t wear a face mask.  

This is a sixth form student, upset about the exams debacle.  It was decided that it would be enlightening and would add to the story if we saw that she has a chicken pox scar.

Does the BBC do this because they hope that the speck of mascara that has stuck on to the woman’s cheek may be thought to be a blackhead?  Why do they zoom in on blemishes or unusual features of a woman but never those of a man?  They are particularly prominent on large, High Definition television screens.

Perhaps the editors think that what a man has to say is intrinsically more interesting than a woman’s point of view or opinion, however expert that woman may be or how renowned in her field she is.  Do viewers need quirky images to retain their interest when a woman speaks?

I usually already know the answer to questions I sometimes ask on this blog but this time, I am stumped.  

Just as I have no idea why the BBC altered the structure of the questions on Mastermind  to make the programme dull and tedious (click to see), I have no idea at all why the BBC insists on showing close ups of most of the women they interview on news bulletins.

Enlighten me please!

Was this the practice when the BBC interviewed Caroline in 2014?  She spoke interestingly and informatively without a close up.  That was just as well as you can have no idea what could have appeared!

169. Plagiarism, a recovered deleted post from 2013

This post is out of sequence and it is not the latest.  It was first published more than 7 years ago on June 6th 2013. 

I have just discovered that somehow and I don't know why or when, it was deleted.  

I'm not especially pleased or proud of it but I am re-posting it just to keep the collection complete.

TW 

August 3rd 2010

Plagiarism!!!!

June 6th 2013

I’m a member of the Queen’s English Society.  (QES) 

For £20 a year I get a very interesting quarterly magazine called ‘Quest’ and the satisfaction that I am supporting a worthwhile organisation.  

It is not evangelical.  It doesn’t try to preserve the English language the way that the Académie Francais does for French.  Its objective is “to promote the maintenance, knowledge, understanding, development and appreciation of the English language as used both in speech and writing”.  

Every edition of Quest has a number of articles on the English language, most of which I find interesting.  In the current magazine there is a piece on the correct and the unnecessary use of the hyphen.  How about this for an interesting assertion in a recent article?

“English grammar is an algebra that uses fuzzy logic based on norms, conventions and, most important of all, euphony.”

(I never read an article in Quest without a dictionary to hand.)

It also has the occasional joke.  The first joke I remember in it from some years ago was:

Dale, a Yorkshire farmer’s favourite sheepdog, died.  The farmer was distraught and he took photos of the dog to a goldsmith in Leeds and asked if he could make a statue of Dale out of gold.

“Do you want him 18 carats?”

“Nay lad.  Eatin’ bone.”

Occasionally it asks searching, philosophical questions such as:

If father is Pop, how come mother’s not Mop?

The Spring 2013 issue of the Quest magazine arrived in the middle of April.  I started reading an article on page 17 titled, “Attending to the Language”.

What do you call people who go on a course? Are they attenders?  No, they are not.  Apparently, they are attendees.  

“This is something I once wrote about on my blog,” I thought.  (Click here)

I have just seen that the spell check on my Mac has underlined ‘attenders’ as being a spelling mistake but ‘attendees’ remains unblemished and clear.

“Hang on.  This is my post.  I remember using that phrase "unblemished and clear".  Someone’s been to my blog, read my post and lifted it.  The plagiaristic bastard!”

I jumped up and went to find Caroline.  “Look at this!  Look at this!  Some bugger’s stolen my post.”

“Let me see.”

I handed her the magazine and she started to read.  She turned the page and a little later, looked up at me.  She was smiling. 

“What are you laughing at?  It’s not funny.”

“Do you know who wrote it,” she asked.

“Is it someone I know?”

“Not as well as me,” she said.

I looked to the bottom of the page she passed to me and there was the bastard’s name:

             Terry Wilton

I went to my Hotmail “sent” folder.  I had sent that contribution to QES in June 2010, nearly three years ago.  I had completely forgotten about it.

Some day, Playboy Magazine may publish the letter I sent to them in October 1968.  I can’t remember exactly what it was about now but I do remember it was carefully written in my very best and neatest handwriting.

168. I am a Dreadfully Bad Salesman

Yesterday, I sold my car.  For the first time since September 3rd 1969, I do not own a car.  I am carless.  After 49 years and 10 months, I am free of all worries concerning the cost of fuel; knocks and squeaks; smoke, rattles and shakes.  No longer will I care how stupidly and badly everyone else drives (and that includes you).

I sold it because for the time being, I don’t need a car.  Since March 8th, I’ve been out in my car only five times and I’ve driven just 42 miles.  

Caroline is working from home and as her future work practices are certain to be very different from the way they were, we don’t need two cars for the foreseeable future.  So, not only am I losing weight because of Lockdown  (Click to see), we are saving money as well.

The first car I ever bought was a 1959 Austin Healy Sprite.  It was 10-years-old and cost me £195.  I paid for it with just three weeks’ wages from my last ever summer job at Birds Eye Frozen Foods factory in Lowestoft.  It would be nearly 10 years before my salary as a teacher matched the pay I received at Birds Eye as a student.

The Sprite was described as a sports car and as it was a two-seater with a soft top, I suppose it was.  However, the pitiful lack of power generated by its tiny 948cc engine meant that I had difficulty out-accelerating even a double-decker bus.  

It was claimed to have a top speed of about 80 mph but the heavy slab of concrete I kept in the boot to prevent the rear end from sliding about meant the recently introduced 70 mile an hour speed limit didn’t ever cause me any real concerns.

The Sprite was followed two years later by a second-hand Sunbeam Alpine; another sports car but an altogether classier motor with a walnut dashboard and leather seats that cost more than a thousand pounds when new.  I paid £495.

The last car I ever bought - the one I sold this week - was an electric, BMW i3.  Between the Sprite and the i3, I think that there have been 15 others.  None of them was a lemon and they all performed and behaved as they should have done.

Selling the BMW was an interesting experience.  I wrote in a post some years ago that I don’t like it when I’m mistakenly called Terry Dawes (Click to see) because that sounds like the name of a second-hand car salesman but if I were a second-hand car salesman, I’d be useless.

I knew that the worst deal I could get for my car would be by going to a website that gave a guaranteed valuation.  I also knew, from a friend who had been to “We Buy Any Car” to sell his 2014 Audi, that the price they initially offered online was nothing like the amount they would finally tender once they had actually seen the car. 

To begin, he looked at Audi dealers to find out how much a car similar to his would cost from a dealer.  He found it was from £11,500 to £13,000.  

When he looked online, We Buy Any Car offered £8,845 for his Audi.  He took it to be looked at and stood, watching in disbelief while the “salesman” found enough problems to reduce the offer to £7,245: a reduction of £1,600.

I found out recently that these salesmen are on a commission of 10% for the amount by which they can reduce the offer.  That one tried to earn £160 in 15 minutes.  He failed!

I knew that to achieve the highest price, I should sell my car privately.  I was warned off using eBay as their fees are very high for car sales and so I put an advertisement on Gumtree as well as mentioning it on the BMW i3 Facebook page.

The response was immediate and overwhelming.  17 phone calls in the first hour but only one of those callers actually asked about the car.  The others, all very polite and insistent Indian gentlemen, wanted to ask me about the accident they heard I’ve had in the past 3 years that wasn’t my fault.  

I was surprised that even though they spoke with pronounced Indian accents, they all had names like Kevin, Michael and Roger.  I’m still getting those calls more than a week later. 

One woman caller was very enthusiastic and asked me to consider it sold.  All she had to do was see it and if it was as described, she would certainly buy it.  Unfortunately, she lived 80 miles away in Lyneham in Wiltshire and she expected me to take the car to her.  When I told her that it was conventional for her to come to me, she explained very calmly and patiently, as if she were speaking to a very small child, that would be impossible.  “Obviously, I can’t,” she sighed in exasperation, “I don’t have a car.”

One person saw the advertisement and rang to ask what colour it was.  As there was a photograph with the ad, I was a little surprised.  It seemed to me that many people just rang for a chat.

Are all the people who reply to Gumtree advertisements dishonest, stupid or lonely?  

The first question most of them asked is whether they can pay using PayPal.  As it’s impossible to have a PayPal account without having a bank account too, I said they couldn’t.  

I had searched online and found that there are many ways that fraudsters use PayPal.  After I told them I would only accept payment in cash or by bank transfer, I never heard from them any of them again.  None of them but Jeff, that is.

A man calling himself Jeff, was the most persistent crook of them all.  He told me he wanted to buy my car as a surprise present for his “lovely, beautiful, disabled wife.”  He told me that he couldn’t use bank transfer because they have a joint account.  She would see the transaction and the surprise would be spoilt.

He kept stressing how much it would mean to her but as he pointed out many times, I have a heart of stone.  I wouldn’t relent.  

In the end, worn down by many fruitless exchanges with members of the Great British Public, I admitted defeat.  I took the car to the BMW dealer that sold it to me nearly four years ago.  

The price they offered was more than We Buy Any Car but some £3000 less than that which their representative cheerfully admitted they would be seeking to achieve for it in a week or so on their forecourt.  “We have overheads, you realise.”

Perhaps, I should ring Jeff and tell him where to find the car he was so desperate to have.  His wife will be overjoyed.