Simon Writes

Random musings

by Simon Hastelow

Sometimes I have plenty of things to write about, other times I struggle to think of something. This month I bring you my personal musings on three burning issues from the past week:

1.Handy pocket tissues

2.Towing capabilities of electric vehicles

3.Hypocritical Facebook warriors.

The first one is probably the weirdest one.

We’ve probably all used those handy little packets of five tissues. I carry them in my car, in my camera bag and work bag, but the other day I was just about recovering from a bout of man-flu and was searching for a tissue. The box in the kitchen was empty and I knew I had a packet of tissues in my work bag, but instead I went and got a bit of loo roll to blow my snozzer.

The daft thing is that I walked past my work bag containing my ‘handy’ packet of tissues to get to the loo-roll.

Why didn’t I use the handy packet? Why has the same packet of tissues been in my work bag for at least three years, probably longer?

Because in my mind, once I open it I won’t have a handy packet of five tissues any more, I’ll only have four. Something in my head tells me that I need five tissues at all times for emergencies, an opened packet containing just four will not suffice, and will not get me through the next emergency, whatever and whenever that is. either. We usually buy them in bulk so there’s at least another ten unopened packets in the kitchen cupboard so I could just grab another one for my work bag, but I don’t.

This has no real relevance to anything other than the fact that once we get to a certain age we tend to start keeping stuff just on the off chance that it will come in handy one day. It’s not sensible at all and I refer you to a previous issue of The Mud Life when I discussed clearing out the shed of parts for vehicles that I no longer own.

The only instance where I have managed to kick the ‘we must save it’ temptation is with odd bits of wood. My dad and my father-in-law both have impressive collections of random bits of wood which they can call upon for household maintenance and other DIY jobs.

When we moved into our new house four years ago I decided I was not going to do that. When I’ve finished a job I just bin all the extra bits I didn’t need, and go and get new stuff for the next project.

I know this will upset some people, it’s just not the manly thing to do, but saving random stuff makes no sense either, just like constantly carrying a handy packet of tissues that I will probably never open!

So, on to EVs

A recent episode of Top Gear showed the three presenters driving different electric vehicles and towing camping trailers and a miniature caravan. When it started I thought I knew where the section was heading - the obvious lack of towing capability of Electric Vehicles, but no, this wasn’t mentioned at all.

They did say that smaller units were ‘the future’, but there was no mention of the reason, which surprised me.

I had a good natured online discussion with the national sales manager of a well known caravan brand some time ago after this brand launched a campaign showing one of their units being towed by a hybrid - the Mitsubishi PHEV. I mentioned that it was a shame that the Mitsubishi had been cancelled, and that there were very few other hybrids or EVs which would be able to tow his vans.

Unless you go for a Tesla, or other EV costing six figures, you’d either need to downsize your van, drastically, or try to keep the old combustion engine going for much longer than intended.

The Jeep Renegade 4xe hybrid has a 1150kg towing limit (compared to 1500kg for the non-hybrids). This might sound like only a small difference, but it severely limits your choice of caravan.

Even a small 2-berth can weigh 1200-1300kg and my father’s 4-berth is 1600kg. He can happily tow this with his Discovery Sport at the moment, but if he went fully EV in the future he’d have to get a smaller van or go for one of the more exotic EVs.

Caravan manufacturers are working hard to reduce the weight of their units, but at the same time adding more and more features to entice people to upgrade. It will be a difficult task to market lightweight vans in the future that everyday EVs can handle.

Finally we come to the hypocrisy of Facebook Mouthpieces.

We all know that social media, and Facebook in particular, has just become an animated version of a public toilet wall, but one thing that made me laugh out loud recently was the issue of roadblocks.

You will have seen the protests by the group ‘Insulate Britain’ as they block major junctions of the M25 and other parts of our road network. The usual suspects on my ‘friends’ list started frothing at the mouth and suggested that truck drivers should just drive over them.

The media always manages to find someone caught up in protests that has been delayed getting to critical, life-saving cancer treatment, or we get a fleeting glimpse of an ambulance delayed in a traffic jam which is then linked to the protestors. This then gives the politicians the ability to deflect from the reason for the protest and just condemn the protestors for ‘putting lives at risk’.

Anyway, imagine my absolute delight when I saw the same person, who suggested just driving through the protests, then loudly supporting HGV drivers in their go-slow protests which caused major traffic congestion on sections of the motorway network.

No mention of people missing life-saving hospital appointments? Just total, unwavering support for the drivers and their protests focussing on the price of diesel.

How is a person able to support one protest but not the other when the tactics are the same?

I am not often surprised by the stupidity, and total lack of irony or self-awareness, shown by people on social media, but this one did make me chuckle.