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I’m not normally one to get excited by things the government does to try and “help” us poor subjects - usually it becomes a completely worthless fudge - just look at NHS Direct and HIPs for proof.

But I have to give credit where credit is due and say that the phone service for renewing your car tax is just brilliant. It only takes a few minutes (unlike the half-hour queues in the Post Office) and best of all you don’t even need to find your MOT and insurance - they are checked automatically. Yay!

If you didn’t already know, phone 0870 850 4444 when you get your V11 reminder through the post.

Certainly wasn’t expecting to see a bird of prey in the city! Wish I had got a picture of it, but the visit only lasted a couple of seconds. It swooped in, sat down, looked around, and swooped back out again.

It was a larger-than-usual brown bird with piercing eyes and a small sharp beak. From looking around on t’internet I think it was a female sparrowhawk - here is a pic I stole from the BBC website…

Much more interesting than a pigeon!

Perhaps it is nesting in the graveyard next door? I’ll keep an eye out!

It boils down to weather.

North East - Summer lasts 2 days.

South East - Summer lasts 2 weeks.

Then you get an almighty thunderstorm. I’m watching it right now, flashes of light, piercing cracks from the sky, torrents of water.

Once again this morning I saw a preposterously lazy bit of journalism on the BBC.

The enthusiastic reporter had invited himself into someones home and was telling them how to save energy. Turn off the light in the hallway? Check. Switch off the Playstation if you go to the shops? Check. All sound advice.

But then he came out with the most absurd statement - and one that is repeated all the time by the green lobby. “TVs on standby use 90% of the energy of ones that are turned on”.

Come again? 90%! Just to power a little red light and the circuit that senses the “on” signal from the doofer? You must be joking!

A telly on standby, not destroying the world, yesterday

If the TV really used 90% power on standby you would be able to fry eggs on it! All that energy has to go somewhere - and the only realistic way it could be lost would be as excess heat. But have you noticed how your TV is actually stone cold on standby?

The standby-energy-use-myth is just that - a myth and a lie perpetrated by people that don’t understand how things really work, but won’t let that get in the way of their agenda.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally support sensible measures to decrease power consumption - after all, I’m the one paying the electric bill. But it is a folly to manipulate the argument with bad science, because it makes you look like a twerp.

I did a little research - first of all, have a read of this great little article from the Guardian. Then, take a look at the manual from your TV. It probably has power consumption statistics in the back. Our old 28″ CRT Panasonic consumes a whopping 90W when switched on. And in standby mode? A not-so-whopping 1.4W. Now it has been a while since I did my Maths A-level but I am sure that is a lot less than 90%.

By my calculations, every activist that watches the eco-propaganda movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, at 100 minutes long, is wasting the equivalent of an astonishing 104 hours of standby power!

I’ll be leaving my TV on standby I think. It’s just so easily turn-off-and-on-able. And it’s far from destroying the world or breaking the bank.

After another afternoon ‘effing and blinding at the ridiculous orange machine I bought to supposedly mow the lawn (not leave random long tufts all over it) I thought I would look a little more deeply into the history of the hover mower.

Did you know that it was invented by a man called Karl Dahlman, and that it won a gold medal at the Brussels Inventors Fair in 1964? Did you also know that the first Flymos were produced a year later at a factory in Newton Aycliffe here in the sunny North East of England? And did you know that they used to be blue and white?

Well, I didn’t know any of this until I read it on Flymo’s own website - take a look if you like.

However, what I do know is that hover mowers don’t really work. Especially cheap modern ones.

When I was a lad my dad had a Flymo. It was big, heavy, powerful and proudly orange. It had a vicious metal blade that he would regularly sharpen on a grinding wheel in the garage. And it actually seemed to cut the grass.

Fast forward 20-odd years and, as the proud first-time owner of a garden, it is time for me to buy my first mower. Naturally I choose a Flymo.

This particular model (the Hover Vac) has two high-tech advances - grass collection and safe, plastic blades. Amazing! Until you actually put it on the lawn…

The grass collection system is based on a vacuum sucking up the grass cuttings from the back of the mower. Sounds reasonable until you realise that the whole principle of a Flymo is that it sits on a cushion of air. So all the effort to blow air out beneath the front is ruined by the grass collector stubbornly sucking the back of the mower back onto the ground. Result - you can’t move the mower.

To solve this, remove the grass collector. The mower moves, and 20 quids worth of plastic box lies idle in the garage.

Next up, the plastic blades. Of course these are safe - because they are blunt! No children’s fingers at risk, nor any grass either.

Combine these two “features” with the Flymo’s fundamental problem - that it is constantly blowing the very grass it is trying to cut away from the blades, rather like a hairdresser trying to give you a trim and a blowdry at once - and my lawn does not get mown. Instead, the grass gets gently squashed, ready to spring up to its original height the following day.

I may as well walk around with a pair of chopping boards strapped to my feet. At least I would save on electricity.

Just watching a pastiche of the Tron light cycles on Family Guy reminded me of how great that film looks now.

At the time it was seen as a weak cash-in on the video games boom. Now it stands out as one of the most visually striking films of the era. OK, so the storyline is pretty rubbish, but rather like the psychedelic sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, who cares if it makes sense when it feels so right?

Skip the heavy rock numbers - very dated now - but wallow in the ethereal delights of Rhinoceros and Crush. In retrospect, is this the best Pumpkins album?

Mmmmm…. delicious apple and blackcurrant barley drink. Just dilute to taste. Best of all - NO artificial colours or flavourings and NO added sugar! Says so right there on the label. Great for tennis players, great for me, great for the toddler.

But hold on a second. What is all this on the back?

A big tick next to ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS! Yes, this baby is loaded! Aspartame AND Saccharin. On top of that Robinsons have given me a wide selection of artificial preservatives to savour too. Delicious for me, delicious for the toddler - NOT.

Just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover - or more accurately, a foodstuff by its marketing campaign.

Shame on you Britvic.

Any horological experts out there? Does this clock mean anything to you?

It is something we found in a flea market in France. The make is Japy, which seems to have some provenance but I have found out very little about it. The clock itself has a clockwork mechanism and appears to be made from pressed steel with a painted finish.

We have it in our kitchen where it keeps moderately good time but looks very chic. At a wild, wild guess I think it was made some time between the 1930s and 50s but I really have no idea.

If you do know a little bit about this clock please post a comment and let us know, I would be fascinated to hear from you.

I don’t think my language is that bad around the house - but you know, sometimes when you drop something or bump into something else you can’t help yourself.

And in that oh-so-charming-repeat-every-word way that 2-year-olds have, my daughter is now also saying that particular four-letter-word if she drops something or falls over too!

I hope she forgets it soon otherwise trips to the supermarket could get even more embarrassing… excuse me while I go and wash my mouth out with soap.