Summer is here with a vengeance. Already it feels sweltering hot after dark with all the warm air persisting upstairs. My trusty little fan (no, I'm not going to give him a name) struggles to provide sufficient ventilation. I'm considering buying a movie studio wind machine, but then hauling an ex-WW2 radial aero-engine up my stairs isn't for the faint hearted and something tells me it won't fit. Might be a little noisy too. Oh yeah... Fuel economy... With petrol at an obscene price these days I can't help wondering how much that's going to cost...

Funny thing was I was walking home yesterday in the sunshine, sweating profusely, and ahead was a black Trans-Am. We don't get a lot of american cars in Britain, mostly because the manufacturers put the steering wheel on the wrong side, but also because they're usually so much bigger than european cars and we struggle to make way on our narrower roads. It did look like a tidy example. The passenger was getting out to take photo's whilst the driver attempted to park closer to the pavement - wouldn't want to block the road. These muscle cars would be great if the US realised that some nations have bendy roads. It wobbled on its wheels as it stopped in place.

I asked the passenger about it. He reckoned the best they could get was fourteen miles to the gallon. Not a cheap car to drive in Blighty then. It seems he and the driver are off to Le Mans for some race meeting or other. Good luck to them and hope they get a second mortgage to pay for it. This does remind me of a Cadillac a friend of mine bought in a moment of automotive madness twenty years ago. Proud of his new giant imported barge, he called his brother and both being mischievous characters decided it would be fun to inaugurate their yankee car ownership by cruising round the block. They ran out of petrol.

Actually, talking about american cars, there was a chap just down the road from where I saw this Trans-Am who owned a black Corvette, mid-to-late 70's style, and that too looked very nice. Not as big as I imagined it might be, and certainly less visually dominant than the gleaming red new-model ZR I saw parked outside a sandwich bar last year. I was passing that Stingray model when he'd pushed it out of the garage, a treasured second car for the weekend, and listened as he attempted to get it started. I think he sold it shortly afterward.

We brits like american cars. It's just that we don't have affordable petrol and wide, straight roads.

Defrosting of the Week

The ice box in my fridge had begun to look like a scene from Starwars II: The Empire Strikes Back in 1/300th scale. It was almost impossible to put anything in there and hope to get it out again the following day. perhaps then it might be just as well if I defrost it. Switch the thing off, prop it up on a tray to stop water leaking out, and go about my business while I wait.

What I hadn't realised was that my fridge is also the exit for a natural spring. I went back into the kitchen to see how things were proceeding only to discover that the floor of both kitchen and bathroom were host to a large puddle. Oh ye gods this water is going to seep downstairs! Okay... Right.... Bucket, mopping up rags, rubber mat. This may take some time...