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Eurozone: Landlord of collapsing gardening shed sends out for more timber…

2 Jun

The occupiers of the thirteen-year-old garden shed known as ‘The Eurozone’ have asked their Belgium-based landlord, Brussels, to “…hurry up with the repairs before the whole f******* lot falls over…”

The occupants, all members of a gardening club that sells produce to each other are desperately searching for ways to shore up the somewhat out-dated building. It was recently discovered that only the presence of the occupants themselves inside the shed was stopping it from total collapse.

An attempt by Greece to make a run for the door was thwarted when Germany grabbed it and tied it’s legs together. Spain, who were spotted edging towards freedom while whistling nonchalantly has been given threatening looks by the other occupants.

During the last two years, Italy had a shovel confiscated when other countries thought it was using it to tunnel through the floor. Ireland was then paid a huge bribe by Great Britain – a next door neighbor – to stay exactly where it was standing.

“We sell a lot of gardening tools to the present occupiers, so it would be awfully tragic for us if any of the occupants escape and cause the whole shed to topple over.” explained Britain.

“If everybody keeps calm, everything will be all right.” commented Germany, “The only problem will be if any of us try to leave. We can lend money to anyone who wants to buy more plant pots or shears.”

“The big problem is that we don’t actually need to buy gardening tools and we are broke because we keep borrowing money.” Greece explained, shouting to reporters from inside the noticeably unstable property. “The gardening tools we bought were pretty expensive, even though we got discount. Then, we had a few years of bad harvests and some of our crops were stolen by corrupt business people. Now we can’t afford to stay in the club. It is financially ruining us! The landlord should get his act together and sort out the shed!”

In response to reporter’s questions, the landlord, Brussels, has repeatedly explained that it is impossible to blame the landlord, since this is completely against the rules that the landlord has created and that all the members have agreed.

“We have, however, found some more bits of timber in the corner of the garden and are going to use these to prop up the shed for the time being. Unfortunately, these are rather expensive bits of timber and they will have to be bought by the occupants of the shed, who also paid for the shed to be built and for me, the landlord, to run it. Actually, they are phenomenally expensive. Especially if you are broke. But, we can lend money to anyone who is broke.”

An attempt by Greece to make a lunge for the landlord was averted when other countries restrained it and sat on it.

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Obama Secret Service Agents “cannot spot a prostitute at a nightclub bar” – Peter T. King

23 Apr

I Spy For The F.B.I.

In a worrying development for the American President, it has emerged that some Secret Service Agents are unable to identify a prostitute in a Colombian night club, specializing in offering personal services to male clients.

Defending the Secret Service Agents who are caught up in the scandal, Peter T. King – chairman of the house committee on Homeland Security has admitted:

“…Some of them were saying that they didn’t know they were prostitutes…”

When shown a photograph of  the Pope and asked to identify the person in the picture, it is believed that six Agents confirmed that he was in fact Boy George and a further nine identified him as Barbara Streisand.

President Obama is believed to have locked himself in the bathroom and is refusing to come out until he is given a Walmart shell suit and a ginger wig.

An anonymous source at the New York Times who revealed this amazing fact said that they believed that over the last fifty years, U.S. Secret Service Agents may have mistakenly slept with thousands of women whom they thought were just ordinary housewives.

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Dow Chemicals almost kicked out of London 2012 Olympics. More pain to come.

17 Apr

Dow Chemicals, that lovable corporate giant who didn’t  bring you the 1984 Bhopal Disaster and who aren’t responsible in any way for injuring up to half a million Indian citizens in one of the worst industrial catastrophes in world history, are not happy bunnies.

Just sixteen weeks before the 2012 Olympic Games begin to deliver them “marketing gold”, they are being asked to get out of town. Just when the winning line for their social media campaign is in sight, they run across a problem. Nobody likes them.

Last week, the prestigious London Assembly decided by only one solitary vote not to kick Dow out of the 2012 Olympic games and cancel them as a sponsor. As close shaves go, that was very close.

Dow are not the kind of giant international corporation who take kindly to criticism. Dow takes the view that people who say that they are a classic example of a “corporation gone bad” are misinformed.

So that nobody is misinformed ever again, Dow have made the real truth abundantly clear on their website:

“Dow’s policy is to be lawful, highly principled and socially responsible in all of its business practices.”

“At Dow, diversity and inclusion are inherent in our work environment”.

“In 2011, Dow had annual sales of $60 Billion and employed 52,000 people worldwide”

“For over two decades we have embraced and advocated Responsible Care – a voluntary industry-wide commitment to safely handle our chemicals from inception in the laboratory to ultimate disposal”.

Well, so that nobody is misinformed ever again, here is some more real truth:

After persistently ignoring warnings from both American experts and local officials, a badly maintained Union Carbide plant, operating with knowing disregard to safety procedures, leaked toxic gas across a vast area of housing during the night.

Within days, all the local trees lost all their leaves.  Two thousand dead farm animals were discovered and disposed of. 170,000 injured people were received by medical staff. They were all suffering from the same effects you would get if you inhaled cyanide. Thousands died and more than a million people were physically damaged, it is now widely believed.

Union Carbide offered $350 million -only the sum they were insured for – as compensation. The Indian Government estimated compensation to be one thousand times higher than that figure. The discredited and financially ruined Union Carbide Corporation sold its Bhopal plant for peanuts in 1994 and in 2001 both Union Carbide and that plant were bought up by Dow Chemicals…purely for reasons of profit.

To this day, hundreds of thousands of injured victims have been denied either proper justice or reasonable compensation. Dow has said “No” and Dow means “No”.

The massive organisational project that is the 2012 London Olympics has always had an ‘unreal’ air about it. Whereas few would wish to knock the hard work of those athletes who pursue world excellence, many people have always maintained that not only are the Games themselves already seriously tainted by allegations of corruption but that London simply isn’t the right venue for them.

The list of key sponsors looks increasingly like a roll-call of corporate and athletic pariahs. Neither Coca-Cola nor McDonalds can make any claim to having raised the health standards of anyone in the world. But…Dow Chemicals…?

How on earth Lord Sebastian Coe and his Organising Committee were stupid enough to allow Dow to become a major sponsor of their event is to remain a mystery for now. Perhaps it was the large wad of money.

There is a huge elephant in the corner of the living room again. Lord Coe and his very important friends cannot see it.

Everybody else can.

Dow Chemicals have a slogan for their range of paints:

“A Smarter Way To Hide”.

Dow Chemicals also have a Corporate slogan:

“We believe that taking the extra step to be socially responsible does not hold us back – it sets us apart”.

Absolutely, Dow.

Absolutely…

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Car Auctions: Nightclubs for the over 25s…?

6 Mar

Right. Let’s get down to business.

The first time you had sex with someone who wasn’t actually you, three things happened:

1) You couldn’t compare the sensation to anything else that you had previously experienced.

2) You got a strange look from the person you were doing it with, somewhere towards the end.

3) You suddenly realised why some people did it for a living.

Okay, Now you are a little older, you should try buying at a car auction. Its pretty much the same deal.

Regardless of gender, when you are feeling too old to be going to a nightclub, you are just becoming old enough to enter the world of car auctions. Just like some weird deleted scene from Benjamin Button, as you become too old to spill a Smirnoff Ice while drooling at someone on the dance floor, you come of age to enter a far more exciting world of sober intrigue and expensive nods.

Car auctions are not for everyone. They can be like getting off with a complete stranger and then waking up the next morning to find you have no credit card. Or, they can make you happy for the rest of your life. You can save $5,000 easily at a car auction while having fun at the same time. You can’t do that at a nightclub.

Thousands of one, two and three year old cars are sold each day by Auction Houses. Just one auction I visit regularly can crank the ‘hammer’ speed up to one car sold every fifteen seconds. Most of the second hand cars that you see on a dealer forecourt have been through these auctions. The dealer adds about 30% to the price and sticks them out front, sometimes without even needing to polish the door handles.

The truly massive over-production of new cars in the West is threatening near-catastrophic melt-down of our economies. This is no over-exaggeration. Western Europe relies heavily on new car manufacture to employ it’s workers. As an extreme example, Spain’s demand for new cars has dropped by an estimated 55% since 2007. European manufacturers are over-producing new cars by a rate of 20% per year. Jobs are going to be lost. Presidents and Prime Ministers are looking pasty and grey. Insomnia is the new ‘black’. As new car prices drop, nearly-new car prices drop more. Especially at auctions.

The latest Roadwax “Western Leader Poll” results are in. All western leaders were asked the same three questions by Roadwax, their premier trusted source of internet motoring groove.

Q 1) “As a Western Leader, did you get out of bed at 3.20am last Wednesday and see if there was anything in the fridge worth finishing off?”

Q 2) “Did you eventually decide instead to neck all the whiskey from the cupboard and cancel your first meeting?”

Q 3) “Even though all of you are millionaires, do you ever fancy sneaking off and going down the car auction?”

All Western Leaders have now returned their answers to me. Putin replied twice, but he doesn’t actually count on this one. Sorry, Vlad. Yes, I know you hate being called Vlad.

Just like Roadwax showed you in four easy parts how to find a good car to have a crash in, Roadwax is now going to show you how to understand car auctions and save between £500 and £50,000 from your hard earned cash.

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General Motors Found Mumbling To Itself On Night Bus To Penge

4 Mar

The household name and multinational giant General Motors has been spotted on the 176 Night Bus from Trafalgar Square to Penge, South London, England.

Relatives of the American auto legend, once famous for world-first cars including the Chevrolet Bel-Air, Corvette, Camaro and the entire Cadillac range and also many other outstanding automotive classics, have been informed.

G.M.’s confused and highly agitated state initially aroused the suspicions of fellow Night Bus passengers when he stood up, wrapped roasting foil around the top of his head and screamed: “…I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me…?” as the bus approached Waterloo Station.

Emma Thong, 18, a stylist from Croydon said: “At first, I was quite shocked, but G.M. suddenly burst into tears and sat down again so I let it go. It is not something you expect from a multinational conglomerate but I didn’t want to get involved.”.

General Motors left a note last week with a next-door neighbour, saying that he had met a French woman on the internet and was going away for a while.

“G.M. often did that sort of thing.” neighbour Jack Daniels said yesterday.   “He shacked up with some Isuzu woman in Japan for a while but things never really went as planned. Heart wasn’t in it. Got involved with a Korean called Daewoo and kept telling everybody she was the real thing but I guess loneliness makes you blind to what’s really going on.”

Amrit Dinesh, a 24-year-old Post Graduate medical student who was sitting on the bus next to G.M. said: “He used his finger to write the word ‘HEPL’ on the glass. When I explained that he had miss-spelled the word, he started crying and asked me if I knew how to design small cars. I gave him a tissue but he ate it and then began singing about how he wanted to be a country girl and having an old brown dog and a big front porch and keeping rabbits. It was sad.”

London Police were initially alerted by White House staff after G.M.’s rented Opel Corsa was found at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris. Empty wine bottles were strewn across the interior and a love letter from the French car maker Peugeot was found on the driver’s seat. American Embassy staff were unable to make progress and called Scotland Yard.

Detective Inspector Brian Loadsworth from Scotland Yard issued this statement to reporters:

“At about 17.56pm yesterday, we were contacted by American Embassy officials in Paris who were extremely concerned that G.M. had possibly gone on an immense bender with a known French car-maker. They had intercepted evidence that General Motors had got absolutely trousered and signed some sort of agreement with the French car maker, formerly known as Peugeot. The officials stated that they were getting no help from the people of Paris, who were responding to their questions by merely shrugging their shoulders and saying something about George W. Bush. At 02.14 this morning, we received information from a trusted source that General Motors was possibly sitting upstairs on the Night Bus No. 176 to Penge”.

“Armed Police from the Tactical Support Group immediately surrounded the bus and, after a short but vicious struggle, neutralized the bus driver and took him into custody. Seven officers were injured when they were hit by a Ford Transit kebab van. Forty-six passengers who were on the bus have been charged with assault. One American business legend, aged about 100 years, was questioned by Police at the scene and then was released after being cautioned about his behaviour.”

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When your Maybach gets old and can’t remember where it put it’s keys

19 Feb

I have a good friend called Alan who is a highly respected local gardener.  Most of his regular clients assumed that he came with the house when they originally bought it. Alan began bothering their worms from the moment that they first moved in and they would not dream of ever losing his services.

They always make sure that their cars are positioned such that Alan has room to park his ageing Peugeot exactly where he usually parks it and they always leave the keys to the garage where he expects them to be left. All bulbs and new plants are respectfully left on the coal bunker for Alan to judge if and where they are worthy of planting.

Decisions regarding the well-being of the wisteria over the south wall or the casting vote on how to encourage all the bees back from wherever it is they’ve buzzed off to are earnestly sought from Alan. His solemn opinion is then passed on to visiting close friends but never to the neighbours or the daughter-in-law.

Last Friday evening, Alan and I were at the bar in the local pub. We were debating whether sun-bed tanning causes people to show up more easily on CCTV cameras at night or whether instead the artificially-tanned were simply losing their ability to have street fights during daylight. Our failure to establish the exact truth moved us onward instead to a discussion on logic and reasoning.

I suggested to Alan that the reason he is so highly respected by his clients is actually only because he always turns up on time every week and he never ever buys any new tools. He agreed, pointing out that I likewise gain most of my customers by coming across as too stupid to be dishonest and too gullible to be a threat to them.

Which reminded Alan of a dilemma he is now facing with an elderly and valued customer. This reclusive and wealthy gentleman has turned his back on the outside world and now only engages in conversation with Alan and the housekeeper. Alan has been watching the situation develop and things recently came to a head in the walled garden.

The great old house is kept company on one side by a magnificent Victorian kitchen garden with high red brick walls that make a square around a quarter acre of vegetables, protecting them from a world that might have stolen them fifty years ago before the first supermarkets. There is an ornate wrought iron gate with fluted bars set in to a small arch leading out of  the wall to the lawns at the front. The wall that is next to the house mostly collapsed years ago and lies in the brambles where it fell, having taken the chicken coop with it when it went.

On Alan’s last visit, he arrived to find a small, neat pile of bricks had been stacked on the lawn beside the wrought iron gate. Entering in to the kitchen garden, Alan saw the old gentleman stepping softly in his ox-blood brogues between the Swiss Chard, stooped like a hunter, following an invisible prey. As Alan watched, a plump wood pigeon launched up from the ground ahead of its attacker, flapping  away to the trees. The old gentleman swore at it and, seeing Alan, hailed him and strode over with a reddened and animated face.

“Good! Now you’re here, we can make a start! Excellent!”

Alan asked what the old gentleman had in mind. He was rewarded with a look of bemused impatience.

“Didn’t you see the bricks I left you?” the old man pointed. “I want this old iron gate taken out and the arch in the wall bricked up. Plenty of bricks left over to do the job!”

Alan thought it wise to double check the instructions. he pointed out that it was a beautiful gateway and it was in itself a special feature of the garden. The old gentleman was ahead of Alan, waiting for him to finish before enthusiastically explaining what Alan had so clearly failed to see for himself.

“I’ve watched that bloody wood pigeon for months! He’s got fat on my seeds all year and I won’t have any more of it!”

Alan frowned and remained puzzled. This exasperated the old gentleman.

“For heaven’s sake, Alan! The gate! I’ve watched him! He gets inside here between the bars of that damned  gate…!”

Even Joan the landlady thought that was a brilliant story and asked us if we wanted some doubles with a pound off. It seemed like the right decision at the time and it reminded me of an equally knotty problem that my second cousin is trying to solve at the moment.

He designs car door locks mechanisms for some high-end car manufacturers. The brief is quite exciting, especially given the implications for their owners when these future cars will have been owned by them for a few years.

The idea is that the faster the car is driven, the tighter the locks will pull all the doors to the body frame. This will allow much greater rigidity and far advanced body-shell safety dynamics when the vehicle is at speed or else cornering hard.

The development team have had to add about forty extra wires to the car’s main loom. The locking circuits need to communicate with the car’s ECU and so extra chips and programming modules need to be deep-wired into many other programmed circuits to allow over-ride, emergency and unlocking and dead-locking systems to function as well.

I asked him how it was going. He said they’ve got it all to work perfectly, but to steer clear of buying a five year old one that’s done a few miles. Naturally, I asked him why. He replied that the only way they can get the system to work is by programming it so that if one of the fifty-odd extra locking system components fails, the car either automatically unlocks itself for safety, or, if it is switched off, it deadlocks itself down for security. The key will be programmed to prohibit the driver from starting  the vehicle.

Smart thinking.

© 2012 Loop Withers Roadwax.com

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The OFT…Kaylee…and your talking car.

14 Feb

The OFT describes itself as “The U.K.’s consumer and competition authority”. It was  previously known as the Office of Fair Trading. I draw to your attention the fact that there is a difference between “ensuring fair trade” and  “making markets work well for consumers” – which is the OFT’s latest mission statement.

Either way, the OFT has singularly failed to achieve much of benefit for us consumers recently but it has done quite a lot to towards its other goals of increasing competition and expanding business – neither of which have anything to do with fairness. Sorry to labour the point but this is what I wish to draw to your attention.

In 2003, the OFT decided that car manufacturers were using their Dealer Franchise system to unfairly lock owner’s of new cars into over-priced servicing in return for keeping the car’s valuable Warranty up to date.

The OFT estimated that a staggering £500 million could possibly be saved by consumers if car manufacturers dropped their demand that owners could only have their servicing carried out by garages belonging to that manufacturer’s group. The OFT found that franchised dealers were “significantly more expensive” than independent garages and that there was “no clear difference in quality in the services offered by each”.

So far, so good…albeit with that certain whiff of bears, personal hygiene and woodland hanging over their finding.

In 2004, the OFT removed the demands of manufacturers that effectively “lock in” new car owners to their own franchised garages and decreed that the consumer was free to choose independent garages without jeopardizing their warranty.

The manufacturers bowed their heads, examined their finger nails and complied with the OFT.

Independent garages flourished and consumers were delighted to escape the clutches of a single Dealer Franchise garage, whom most believed were milking their wallets.

I would draw your attention at this moment to a line spoken by the character The Terminator, in the film of the same name:

“…I’ll be back…”

Eight years on and we see new car owners skipping without care from one garage to another, finding the right one for their needs while still maintaining their new car warranty.

Unless their car goes wrong. If it goes wrong, it needs taking to a Franchised Dealer. It may go wrong at least once a year.

How does it go wrong? Well, the dashboard lights up like a cheap Christmas tree and the independent garage mechanic looks as if he’s just spent two hours having the EU Directive (PSD 2007 /64/ EC) read to him by a person without teeth.

Kaylee, my delightful eight-year-old friend, is still recovering from the shock of her recent misfortune. In a bid to speed her recovery, I decided it was worth trying out hypnotism on her. Her family had asked me to keep an eye on her while they nipped off to Matalan and I’ve always been fascinated with the inner workings of the human mind.

Kaylee was surprisingly easy to hypnotise. I asked her to regress to a previous life and she soon began talking in a curious dry voice, similar to Anthony Hopkins in Silence of The Lambs.

Me: Where are you, Kaylee?

Kaylee: I’m sitting in an office, Clarice…I’m just chewing on the thoughts of an adversary…

Me: Who are you, Kaylee?

Kaylee: I’ve solved the problem now. The man from the OFT was very ill-educated, Clarice. His poor manners tired me…

Me: What have you done?

Kaylee: Everything is back to normal. The little people…I gave them cars that talked. It was simple.

Me: Cars that talked? Did they ask for cars that talked?

Kaylee: Clarice, you really should listen more closely. If you listen then you will hear the cars talking. Do you remember the lambs, Clarice…? How they screamed..?

Me: You mean the Engine Control Unit? The ECU talks to the diagnostic equipment at the garage?

Kaylee: Precisely. It screams like a victim of torture. It tells the manufacturer of all its faults and all the things wrong with itself.

Me: Well that is a good thing, isn’t it? That means the mechanic can tell what parts need adjustment or replacement.

Kaylee: Only if he understands the secret code, Clarice. And I write the secret code.

Me: Yes, and you sell decoding equipment to garages for big bucks.

Kaylee: That’s right. Big bucks…to garages. But you know that I have high standards, Clarice…it simply would not do if every unwashed mechanic in the world could learn the  beauty of my car’s ECU. Learn its greatest secrets…

Me: You mean, you program in multiple ‘fault codes’ that cannot be collectively interpreted or else do not solve the problem when rectified one by one in a non-accredited garage?

Kaylee: The cars are like children to me, Clarice. All children need to be protected by their family…protected from strangers….wouldn’t you agree…?

Me: Are there fault codes and lines of programming in the car’s ECU that simply do not make sense to anyone but the manufacturer?

Kaylee: A mother always knows what is best for her baby, don’t you think? I do. Anyone can bring up a child, Clarice…but mother always knows best…

I don’t actually have much experience of bringing people out of hypnotism. None, in fact. So, when Kaylee’s parents came in through the front door I told them that Kaylee was in good spirits and that I had a pressing engagement elsewhere.

© 2012 Loop Withers Roadwax.com

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Six Second Pass

11 Feb

Do you want to know why the local garage you always take your car to could also be taking you for a ride? You don’t think that they are? Does it always seems to cost you between £300 – £400 for the annual service? You still don’t think they are taking you for a ride…?

Read my next blog feature. This is just a Six Second Pass.

Feeling like I just wasted your time?

Get your wallet out and count the money. Its all still there.

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The importance of serving toast correctly

7 Feb

156toastprius

It is 06.47 on a Tuesday morning in Autumn. The timing is important to me. It means that I have two minutes to pull my car over to the side of the long driveway that leads to the hotel. Then, out of public view, I can make sure that the side doors where the passengers will get in are still clean.

The rest of the car can wait. This Toyota Prius was hand washed only fifty miles ago but it already has a fine mist of damp cow dung and clay stuck to it from the last three miles of country road. Sometimes, this damned Prius gets washed twice a day. This is England. England is green and pleasant because it rains a lot.

There  is a finger mark on the back door handle so I polish it away with a tissue, get back in and select ‘Drive’. Six minutes to seven. I have been on the hotel’s CCTV since I turned in from the main road so now the receptionist will be telling the doorman that I am approaching. She likes the chauffeurs who pull over and check their car before advancing into her domain.

As I glide out from beneath the blue misty gloom of the trees that line the drive, the great house appears, lit silver and brass by the dawn sun. Its solid  lines dominate the cow draped pastures before it and one knows without doubt that this is how it was intended to be first seen by its visitors. The finest stone and brick faces outwards, protecting the whitest bedsheets and towels from those who have no business within.

The digital clock on my dash changes to 06.55 as I coast the last fifty metres on electric power towards the giant front door where a valet stands, staring intently towards me. On the raked circle of gravel ahead of me, a silver Mercedes S-Class is loading. Its passengers wait while the driver rushes to open the rear doors and let them inside. I brake to a halt early and flash my dipped headlights at the doorman. He raises one finger in acknowledgement from his white gloved hand to bid me to stop and wait. He brushes his electric blue waistcoat and turns to look to the valet who stands at the top of the great stone steps at the front of the house.

I recognise the driver of the Mercedes. His name is Eric. Eric used to be in business with my boss. Now, he is not. I can guess why. Eric is snatching the cases from the pea-shingle drive and stacking them in the back. He shuts the tailgate and strides round to get in behind the wheel. I can see his passengers settling in the back seat and then Eric is rolling, hard right lock, his headlights reflecting off the low stone wall that make his turn so tight.

The gardener stands with his rake and watches in case Eric’s turn requires the grains of pea shingle to be restored. I take my foot off the brake and roll forward to the Portland stone doorway. The doorman now looks to me, pointing downwards with his finger to exactly where he wishes me to position myself  beside his perfect shoes. I catch a glimpse of Eric’s intense and reddened face as he drives by. He glares ahead to the darkness of the beckoning trees.

I push the button and my window glass drops with a whir and the cold air creeps in. The doorman bows towards me and stares into my eyes. I set the parking brake with my foot.

“Having fun…?” I make a cheesy grin up towards him. His mouth is already forming his first words to me but he stops and straightens, looking back to the house. I can hear the valet’s voice. The doorman nods and then bows to me again. He speaks.

“No, I am not. Go round again. We are all out of sequence now…” The frustration in his voice makes me click the handbrake off without delay but his gloved hands still hold on to my door so I keep my foot on the brake.

“Give way to the black BMW that is just arriving, come in back here as soon as he goes, yes…?”

“Yes.” I make to move away but he still keeps his hands on my door. I look back at him. He is staring after Eric’s Merc. He speaks softly.

“That couple…” He struggles for words. “…they got drunk last night and then cancelled Eric’s car. Then, this morning they start screaming at us, asking where he is. They couldn’t remember a thing. Eric only just raced back from Heathrow now. They only had to wait half an hour but…my god…they made sure that everybody knew!”  He stares at me.

“Now…” he continues,  “…I have a gentleman who ordered that BMW for seven fifteen and then changed it to seven…then I do you…”

“What about my seven o’clock…?” I ask.

“She’s just enjoying her toast.” He makes a cheesy grin back to me and he winks. He drops his gloved hands from my door and gives me a dry smile. “Go, go, go…”

A black BMW 740 is approaching fast in my mirror and I glide out of  its path, swinging right lock as it stops on the gravel where I waited a second before. The doorman bows forward to the driver and speaks with him. I drive off and turn again in the staff car park. I wonder how long it takes to eat toast and if I can get a little more door cleaning fitted in.

A warning light in my head tells me not to stop and I swing back into the arrival point for the second time. It is just as well that I do because the black BMW 740 is just pulling away with the  gentleman  inside. The doorman stands, pointing to the ground by his feet, giving me a stiff nod. I coast up and stop a second time.

“Here she comes. One suitcase. Get the door for her and I’ll load you.”

I leap out as he strides to the tailgate. The great hotel facade reflects in the gloss black paintwork of my car. There is a patch of manure and straw stuck on the freshly waxed rear tyre. I scoot around the car and I pull my new passenger’s door open and she gets in without breaking her step or acknowledging me.

The doorman helps the valet who is struggling to fit her huge suitcase in over the lip of the tailgate. I close her door and I pull the boot lid down. A white Range Rover appears behind us and stops short, waiting for me to leave. Two slim businessmen are now standing in the hotel doorway, flanked by the valet and the doorman. They are holding identical carbon fiber briefcases and both wear a small enamel lapel badge, probably identifying their employer or the private society to whom they belong. They are glaring with disapproval towards me. I am in their way.

I pull full right lock and I am facing back to the long avenue of trees that line the drive. The Range Rover pulls up in my vacated space and the parking valet leaps out, holding the door for the two men who get in the front and slip sunglasses on in unison.

I greet my passenger.

“Good morning…!” I try to sound as welcoming as possible. ” Heathrow, terminal five..?”

I haven’t noticed that she has already got her earpieces in and is making calls on her Blackberry. She cradles it in her lap. Her crisp voice cuts across my last words.

“David, its me. Do Vogue America have our proposal on their desk…? Good…I’m in the car going to Heathrow now, so they only have forty minutes to speak to me…”

I curse myself in silence for my failure to spot the white wires that snake up the side of her neck into her blond hair. I push the car hard down the narrow drive. This will make it float better over the bumps and it will also show her that I am not wasting my time. The fallen leaves swirl behind us, sucked up by the car and left to tumble in wait for the Range Rover. I don’t want the two spooks in the Range Rover crowding my rear end at the junction.

Far ahead, a black Chrysler pulls over into the passing bay, flashing me to let me know that I have priority.

“Well…that is their problem, David. Make them sweat and I’ll call you when I am in the air…lousy…book me in somewhere else  next time David…dreadful….the toast was cold again…yes…I had to send it back twice, would you believe…?…I don’t care, David, anywhere that understands how to serve toast…”

I flash my headlights to the Chrysler as I pass him and I begin to brake for the cattle grid at the gate house.

She settles back in her seat and looks out of her window.

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