Sleepypete 1 Headlight 0

Busyish evening tonight.

I've known since last Thursday that I had a duff headlight, thanks to the only Brizzle driver to let me know with a flash of his lights. But I've not really had a good opportunity to get it fixed until tonight. So the plan is hatched :

Nip over to the Mall.
Have a peek in Bristol Honda at their CR-Z car
Acquire a headlight bulb from Halfords
Have a rummage in the shops

The snow around here has turned into lots of dampness (I could hear the rain over Suzanne Vega's 99.9 degrees F album) so another Cunning Plan (tm) gets hatched.

And yes - the person who just went "OH NO !" and hid at the mention of a Sleepypete Cunning Plan, I heard you and I have my eye on you.

Not that cunning actually. More a means of getting a headlight bulb changed where there's decent light and something over my head. That's right, the downstairs car park at the Mall. Sheltered from the wind too, as close to garage conditions as I'm likely to get. Headlight changing is boring so I'm not going to say much about it, let's just say that many of the swear words in common use today were invented during jobs like this.

Modern car engineering can be summed up as :
1 - Everything is crammed in to save space
2 - Things are designed to stay put
3 - Things are not supposed to be removed
4 - Owners should not question "£10 for part, £50 to fit" bills

2 and 3 combined to make changing simple stuff an exercise in frustration as you're putting it back together. Add in number 1 in that list and you have a recipe for bruises. Still, the Focus is much easier to work on than the Puma. I'm very glad none of the bulbs blew on the Puma as I didn't have a clue how to get in to where it kept its bulbs.

Next car ? I have the nagging feeling that the Focus is at the top of its Long Slippery Downhill. You know, the time when something mechanical has been running perfectly until ... And then the problems start piling up. The signal this time has been the inlet manifold last year, which took the car off the road for about 3 weeks before it was fixed. It's done about 62k miles so I should have at least another couple of years out of it. Definitely another few months because there's still a loan outstanding on it.

Meh - rambling again. The Honda CR-Z is looking like the favourite at the moment ... My favoured cars tend to be those that fit around the driver like a glove. They'll subtly let the driver know what's going to happen before it does and will obey their every command with the minimum of fuss. The Puma was great for this, a taut, light chassis and responsive engine made for a leather glove of a car. The Focus has more power but is also heavier ... Think boxing glove ... (Nah - that's unfair, think batting glove)

The Honda looks fairly promising and would definitely satisfy the geekiness being a hybrid. The nagging drawbacks though are :

Underpowered - 0 to 60 is quoted as 10 secs. I'm used to better.
(Puma was 9 secs, my Focus is 8)
Chunky - good for that "glove" feeling but ...
Cramped - I didn't get the chance to look in the boot but I reckon it'll fail the golf club test*
Would entail that "just driven off the forecourt" 50% loss of value

*Golf Club Test : Can you fit a golf bag in without having the back seats down. I've not had my golf clubs out for years but I still think it's a good test. When I was looking at the Mazda RX-8, it got vetoed because it would have been downright evil to get a cricket bag out of ... (Let alone shopping or tellies)

Oh - any trip to the Mall usually ends up as an excuse to wander around there for a while hunting bargains. (And shoes, although I ended up disappointed there AGAIN). It does cost less to buy things like blu-rays and music online but there's something about hunting through looking to see what's on offer. I much prefer scanning shelves to clicking "next" a hundred times on A N Other online shop.

Iron Man 1 and Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr version) escaped from a shop today. Iron Man's a blu-ray upgrade, as I know someone who's wanting to pick it up on dvd ...

So - headlight fixed, potential next car checked out (jury's out). Now chilling out to music, listening to a few randoms before Queen's A Night At The Opera (the album where Bohemian Rhapsody is not the best track ...) comes on :-) Since zeroing the play counts, iTunes seems to be turning into a fan of :

Iron Maiden, Little Boots, Chris Rea, Gloria Estefan, Murray Gold ... Must weave some Kate Bush, Alisha's Attic and Goldfrapp into that mix.