LenT

A shrewd investment, Stephen. The first week I had my Lexus, I managed to scuff both near side wheels - the kerbs being hidden under snow. Our local ChipsAway guy did a splendid repair job, but this was obviously gong to be an expensive hobby. So I too had Alloygators fitted. Now if I collect a scuff on the plastic rim, I think of the money I’ve just saved!

I think you’ve identified another, very valid, moan here, Ed. It’s certainly been my experience that new models - and certainly new versions- grow longer and wider than their predecessor. Unfortunately, this is never matched by a similar expansion in the width of garages, car park spaces and country lanes!

I expect a fair few cups did break. However I don’t think that the water was actually used at the same high temperatures that the early. English tea drinkers favoured. I would also suggest that the brewing process could be conducted at lower temperatures because it was unhurried as it formed an essential component of the tea ceremony.

A brilliant clip, John! I recall this moment too. It’s all very well knowing the theory, but nothing beats a practical demonstration like this. The pleasure on the faces of the assembled scientists and engineers testifies to this. And there is an available moan to go with it. Modern science teaching in classrooms is so sanitised, as I understand it, that practical, hands-on experience no longer features in the curriculum. No wonder we now have a section of society that is gullible and easy prey for any nonsense they read on ‘social media’.

Well, I often am old fashioned! There’s far too much of this ‘modern’ revisionist thinking for my liking!

Why? This is a good illustration of the kind of overthinking that I have often complained about. It confuses form and function with purpose and objective . The function of the seal is to prevent foreign bodies - or even parts of foreign bodies - getting in to the milk in the container. The objective is to get the milk out of the container. This does not mean that the second process should be the reverse of the first! The most efficient method of gaining access to the milk is simply to punch a hole in the seal with any appropriate kitchen utensil conveniently to hand. The seal becomes functionally redundant once the milk has been exposed, so there is little point in trying to remove it intact. Its function as a seal is now more than adequately replaced by the screw cap. In the course of a year, the time thus saved could be more usefully spent in admiring your Lexus automobile while drinking a cup of milky tea.

I suggest that the origin actually predates the Raj and is rather more prosaic. Tea was introduced to England in around 1650 from China. It was very expensive and was drunk in tea cups that also came from China. This ‘China’ was what we now know as bone China and it was of a very delicate nature. If water sufficiently hot to infuse tea was added first, the thermal shock would crack the delicate china. By introducing the milk first, the temperature was reduced sufficiently to prevent this while still brewing the tea.

It’s not easy, Phil. It often involves a lot of hard grafting.

Well said, Vlad. Sadly, you’ve had to ‘take one for the Team’, but hopefully that will demonstrate to everyone else the value of these systems. Like all safety-related products, they’re really investments that you hope you never have to call on. I had BlackVue cameras (other makes are available) in a number of cars but only had to call on it the once. But that more than repaid everything I’d ever spent on them. The only other point I’d make is to get a system that has a Parking Mode’. This ensures that the camera is still functioning when the ignition is off. It’ll help to catch those careless parkers and mindless vandals.

Delighted to hear that the car is repairable. 🙂 I don’t think you’ve mentioned it, so I presume you didn’t have a dashcam fitted. Might be worth getting the garage to fit a dual camera setup while they’ve got it - unless it’s something you can do yourself. When my car was written off by a lane-swapping HGV, the driver’s insurers were dragging their feet - until they got the footage off my camera. They then settled in full with days - and that paid for my Lexus!

You don’t mention the type of driving you do or if you have any other preferences regarding performance. But I think you’ll find that if you want an excellent all-season tyre, then the Michelin CrossClimate 2 comes in the size you seek and is an excellent tyre. It’s certainly quieter than the original Yokohamas that Lexus tend to fit. We have the earlier incarnation on a Suzuki 4x4 and they certainly provide a quiet, comfortable ride with reassuringly high levels of grip. I suggest you might check out the comparative tyre tests for more information.

A very legitimate moan, but surely only part of the story. Until I was forty, I worked and drove daily in London. Time and road space were considered to be at a premium. So at lights drivers would stop about a foot or so apart. It also used to be said that the definition of a millisecond was the time between lights turning green and the car behind sounding its horn. I then relocated my business interests to Leicester. Almost the first thing I noticed was that cars halted some distance from the lights - almost as though the driver had to take a bit of a run up to get over them. The second thing was that cars halted almost a car’s length from each other, as though nervous of catching something contagious. And the final moan, as Pete has so correctly identified, is that the wait at the lights would appear to be so long for some drivers that they clearly had to remind themselves of the required procedure once they noticed they had changed.

Undoubtedly true in a real world encounter. And yet I find myself troubled by the implication that ‘might transcends right’. There’s something admirable about those who will maintain a matter of principle to their own personal detriment. The example that comes to mind is best illustrated by, as it happens, a drawing I once saw. Imagine, if you will, a small sailing dinghy. At the tiller sits an elderly naval type staring resolutely ahead. In front of him is his wife, pointing anxiously at the huge oil tanker bearing down on them. “Ignore them, Doris.” he’s saying. “Steam gives way to sail.”

Anyone familiar with the American TV series ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, created by and starring Larry David, may recall one episode in which he highlights this packaging predicament. Basically one of the characters is in a situation in which he has to cut himself free from his car seatbelt. Fortunately he’s just bought a new craft knife. Unfortunately it’s still in its packaging. He needs the craft knife in order to cut the craft knife out of its packaging. He is, literally, left hanging!

While perusing old threads I came across this comment of yours, John. I’m sure you’re already aware, but for the sake of completeness, I’ll just add that it was Richard Fenyman who identified the cold weather O Ring problem - and demonstrated it, I believe, while in a meeting with NASA. Sometimes it’s the simplest of errors that bring down the mightiest of projects. http://www.feynman.com/science/the-challenger-disaster/

I may well be wrong, Colin, but I wondered if you may have fallen victim to the dreaded autocorrect software? I suspect you actually typed ‘particulate’?

You have opened a rich vein of potential moans there, Philip. And you have rightly identified the results of making air travel more accessible. I can just about recall when it was regarded as something of a privilege and you smartened up. Now many travellers dress down and behave with contempt for fellow passengers and crew, fuelled by quantities of cheap alcohol. But they’re mainly reflecting the general decline in behaviour that has affected society in general. As an aside, aircrew used to moan about other airlines too, you know. Here I can reveal that the airline names were mainly acronyms and were much more descriptive of their standing in the industry. BOAC = Better On A Camel / Britain’s Only Airborne Circus BEA = Back Every Afternoon TWA = Try Walking Across / Teeny Weeny Airline PanAm = Pandemonium Scareways Sabena = Such A Bloody Experience, Never Again Alitalia = All Landed In Tehran And Luggage In Accra Lufthansa = Let Us **** The Hostesses And Not Say Anything Air France = Air Chance Quantas = Q***rs And Neurotics Training As Stewards I do hope these revelations haven’t offended anyone. 🙂

Having married an ex-BOAC Stewardess (that would be me Philip, not you) I can confirm that one cabin crew's moaning passenger can also be one poorly served passenger. The Flight Attendant who takes several minutes to respond to the Call Button could have been occupied sorting out the lunches, or clearing up the mess they've just made on the galley floor - or they could be busy flirting with the First Officer! The great advantage of being crew rather than, say, a waiter, is that your customer can't just walk out.

This does raise another consideration, albeit a minor one. Even in a closed system like a car’s petrol tank, stored petrol degrades as its volatile components evaporate out. By some accounts it has a ‘shelf life’ of about 6 months at 20C and this decreases as temperature rises. This results in reduced performance and - ultimately- difficult starting. Of course you can easily improve matters by topping up with fresh petrol. But this does suggest to me that such frugal use of petrol - or diesel, for that matter - may not be such an altogether good thing as might be supposed.

Why?! Sounds like a missed moaning opportunity to me. 🙂 When this very entertaining thread first started, for some naive reason I thought it would be confined to matters Lexus - or at least motoring related. But now it looks like it could spin off into a website of its own. And then there’ll be no stopping it. These days there seems to be no limit to the ways in which someone can take umbrage. For example, use what someone perceives to be the wrong pronoun and that could be the end of a fine career. Now, if that’s not worth a moan or two….

It’s a rare beef curry of mine that doesn’t feature some tomatoes in it. And, as everyone knows, tomatoes are a fruit - not a vegetable.

Can’t help you there as I’ve no idea where they’re from! All I could discover was that Lexus no longer appeared to support my system. Or were you being ironic? 🙂

As a lad I had what was known as ‘schoolboy French’. But eventually I tired of only speaking to French schoolboys.

My thoughts too, Roger, when I got my IS250. My Lexus satnav uses a microSD card and I soon discovered that Lexus no longer supports this system. Worse still, as a longtime Garmin user (like John earlier) I discovered that the Lexus system was woefully inferior in every respect. Why a car maker with upmarket aspirations, which goes to such as Mark Levinson for their audio system, doesn’t go to the likes of Garmin for their satnav, is a puzzle. I can only hope that the rest of the car lives up to your expectations.

Roger that, Roger. I have often wondered why dashcams are not standard fittings on new cars. As you say, much of the basic technology is already being fitted to new cars. Herbs’ point about updating the system is a valid one, but one we accept in other areas. Take the Lexus satnav system. Either you pay for software updates where available or - like myself - you use a far superior system, like my Garmin, instead. On the other hand, most of us would accept that the ML audio system that Lexus built in to my car is not likely to need upgrading. In my case it’s probably superior to anything I would have chosen myself. And retrofitting all those speakers would have eliminated it anyway!