Switch on the television today and chances are a car advert will appear. Not sure why they're so frequent all of a sudden but it might have something to do with the daft names they give cars these days. Go? Ka? Cee'd? What's all that about? Now I see one for the Vauxhall Adam. What next? The Nissan Nigel? Toyota Terence? The Ford Fred? God forbid someone should build a car called Eve. That will bring new meaning to a warning sign for "road humps".

I can't help thinking that the use of 'fun' names is to try and compensate for a boring motorised shopping trolley. That would be bad enought, but the adverts themselves are just so daft Watching a vehicle swerve through an urban landscape to avoid getting splashed wiith paint by jealous buildings is an interesting piece of media, just not an interesting car to feature. Watching a high diver slip majestically through the space left by open doors of a suspended vehicle is clever, but when would you actually park a vehicle on its side twenty feet above a swimming pool? Truth is, it's the visual theme or the music soundtrack that's more interesting than the hybrid eco-buggy they want you to buy. Good album that. Must log onto iTunes and download it.

Adverts can be pretentious too. "Soul of motion"? What's that? A mystical force created by all moving things that surrounds us, binds the universe together? I have this image in my head of car designers sat at their workstations with the blast shield down, stretching out with their feelings to try and create a car that Han Solo will say is a match for a good blaster. I seriously don't believe that the adverts are right when they descrivbe a car as "breaking with convention". Not only do they look exactly like everyone elses, they probably are the same vehicle to all intents and purposes. Face it, a truly unconventional car wouldn;t sell.

Car names used to be classy, or at least, better than the monosyllabic versions we get now. Even if the cars themselves were heaps of junk built in between tea breaks and strikes by union activists in the midlands of darkest Britain, the names were in a different league. Forget this idiotic obsession with trying to make customers believe their cars are in any way interesting. What we need are bold exciting names like Ferrari Fury, or Lamborghini Lacerator, names that inspire the designer to put a bit of life into their project. As it happens Audi has saved civilisation as we know it by showing their R8 with the engine cover removed on a rolling road. A quick acceleration through the gears then coming to a standstill, engine burbling menacingly, interspersed with some vicarious snorts and growls, exuding testerone and to my mind one of the best car adverts ever.

Building Site Update

Still fascinated by the Old College site visible from my back window. So are many other passers by, who stop at the wire fence to oggle the wierd and wonderful machinery used to excavate a massive canyon in the side of Swindon hill. It just keeps getting deeper. At the far end the channel is now so deep that even from my high vantage point, the diggers are almost lost inside. Before long it'll get so feep that the site will generate its own climate. There'll be hairy sub-human mutant tribes descended from long lost construction workers, dragging peoples cars into the depths at night to worship the starnge God of automobile mass production. Maybe they'll find archaeological evidence of my stolen Eunos Cabriolet?

The Bicycle Cometh

The road junction at the bottom of the hill can get quite entertaining. The traffic lights sometimes get out of sync and you can always tell when that happens because suddenly every vehicle in sight draws to an undignified halt with a crecendo of horn blasts. So noisy in fact that motorists are forced to communicate with sign language.

Coming round the bend at the other end from me was a black BMW, accelerating quickly and risking angry gestures from frustrated motorists. I've noticed for a ong time that BMW drivers are often quite arrogant and self absorbed. He just couldn't resist a couple of hundred yards of empty road ahead of him.

This was one of those strange moments when time seems to slow almost to a halt. Even at that distance, even with his tinted windscreen, we locked eyes on each other. We knew each others mind. He wanted to tear past me enjoying his germanic performance. I wanted to cross the road at a pedestrian crossing. He looked at me. I looked at him. He gunned the accelerator, I pressed the fateful button. He gritted his teeth in a determined dash to beat the lights. I waited patiently with a smug grin. His car slithered to a halt before a red light with a flattened nose visible on the glass. I walked across the road unflustered and victorious. Bow down before the might of civilisation, BMW driver.

But what's going to happen after the government have invested gazillions of pounds promoting bicycles instead of keeping roofs over the heads of unemployed people? Truth of the matter is cyclists have a rule book all of their own, and it isn't very thick. They routinely ignore pedestrian crossings or bye laws prohibiting cycling on the pavement. Just the other morning a youngster performed a wheelie whilst managing to avoid the pedestrians. He aimed his bike in my direction. I looked at him with raised eyebrows He brazenly defied sanity by continuing his wheelie. I got out of the way.

So there you have it. The bicycle is more powerful than the BMW. Or me.