Once again the weathermen have triumphed. The storms have crossed the west country overnight and left us with a wet and rainy day. In fact this rain is a bit unseasonal, but at least it wasn't a hurricane.

By chance I was watching CBS news last night. I wouldn't normally bother because for some reason I can't fathom, american news channels are almost unfathomable. Not this time. The arrival of Hurricane Irene was causing worry for everyone living on the east coast and it seems weather of that scale is something that happens only once every 75 years.

It reminded me of one particular in 1987. A friend of mine worked for a logistics company but because he'd gotten off with a lady at one of his drop-off points, he wanted a day off every week to bonk her senseless, so he got me to sub in for him which was fine because the cash in hand was useful to me.

The problem was that no-one realised we were going to get a hurricane. So I set off early one morning to discover that southern england had been turned into a warzone, with trees uprooted everywhere and lorries overturned in droves. I guess the earth might not have moved her that day, but pretty much everything else did.

Pickups Come Of Age

Awhile back Top Gearproved beyond shadow of a doubt how impossible it was to stop a Toyota Hilux pickup truck from working. It was an imppressive level of toughness, but I sort of wondered at why a vehicle built for such mundane purposes needed the ability to survive armageddon as a selling point.

As I continue to watch events unfolding in Libya, it occurs to me that at last the pickup truck has found its true vocation. I always wondered what people did with that useless space on the back. Now I see the point of it, as trucks drove here and there with 20mm AA quad cannons or missile launcher twinpacks.

I wonder if the Australians wish they'd thought of it as they rebelled against the evil kangaroo regime. A few heavy weapons might have swung it for them. On the other hand, perhaps the autralians had indeed seen the future, as Libya turns ever more toward a real life Mad Max.

Pickups Of The Future

This morning I noticed that astronomers have discovered a planet apparently made of diamonds. it's four thousand light years away, and orbits a nasty neutron star, so getting your wage slaves there and back with spaceships full of expensive conumer luxuries isn't going to be easy. We defintely need the interstellar equivalent of a pickup truck. Perhaps the original Star Trek was again being a little prophetic because some of those symbols on starfleet sweatshirts look remarkably like Toyota badges.