Todays blog entry is devoted to the subject of bigness. Is it a good thing? Upsetting a guy bigger than you is always a risky venture, one of the first and most important lessons we learn as children. I remember a photograph of a protestor at a fuel refinery many years ago getting the shock of his life when the irate lorry driver he was obstructing turned out to be considerably bigger than he was.

The issue of bigness is inherent to human beings. 4x4 drivers rely on it. The sheer size of their vehicles means that even if they don't mount expeditions across arctic tundra to get to work, they can still bully little cars out of the way.

On one occaision I was driving my faithful red MR2 sports car and fell into line on a large roundabout as traffic got a little snarled up. I was in the left lane, coming up gradually on my exit. I had no choice but to drive slowly. On the one hand, there were cars in front, on the other, the sun was shining in my face and every other vehicle on the road a dark silhouette.

Suddenly that massive 4x4 in the lane on my right decided he wanted to avoid this traffic jam, and assuming his bigness meant I could do nothing but shake fists and fume, he pulled out very abruptly in front of me. Did he signal? Probably not, but it's unlikely I would have seen it with the sun dazzling me. Maybe the risk of collision was slight but I was annoyed nonetheless.

Don't get mad, get even. Once off the roundabout and driving along the road, it was impossible to overtake him with all the oncoming traffic and I decided to bide my time instead of doing something dumb. So I drove behind calmly and waited. Oh yes, my honour was impugned, and these things are very important to the male driver. However, the next roundabout was approaching. He was going across and thus took a sort of lazy cut across the left hand side. I stayed on the right, hoping tio nip past, but his big truck obstructed my path.

I gave him a couple of polite toots on the horn to ask him to move over. And he did. Good chap. Now floor the accelerator and zoom past him. Success. Honour is restored (even though I did bend the Highway Code by overtaking on a road junction).

Naturally he got upset and drove behind me inches from my rear bumper, determined that I should be punished for trumping his bigness. Didn't get him anywhere. My throttle pedal worked better than his did, despite his larger V8, and at the strategic moment, I left him floundering behind me.

It was a bit childish, wasn't it? Oh well. Maybe women are right. I'm just a big kid. He he he....

Too Much Of A good Thing

Can you have too much bigness? Apparently so. Being big was great for the dinosaurs when it meant carnivores couldn't touch you. Sadly, as most of us are aware, it also means you run up a huge grazing bill, and when meterorites hit the earth and cause catastrophic damage and climate change, food is hard to come by.

Or what about Mubarak, standing down as Egypts leader? Who was biggest? The ruler of a nation for three decades or a crowd of people who wanted him removed? Or what about Saddam Hussein, whose bigness on the world stage helped him not one jot.

Then there's those people whose size and weight reduces them to a parody of Jabba The Hutt. If you get too big for your boots, you could argue you only have yourself to blame.

And Now, A Real Biggie

Normally I don't discuss trains on this blog, but today I'm going to make an exception. I found a 3D model of a Russian tanker wagon on the internet and it seriously is a humungous piece of ironwork. Apparently these things are trundling back and forth across the former Soviet Union...

Model and textures by Roman Vlasyuk.