Diary of an Ordinary Van

[Vee4]

Ordinary Van, OVE

Say it quickly enough and it might sound like Ordinary Van, OBE. Due to the unfairness of the 'first past the post' electoral system, the Ordinary Van failed in its bid for a parking place in Downing Street, when it would have been appointed to the Privy Council and become known as The Right Honourable Ordinary Van. With that in mind, and with all the talk of New Year Honours, I decided to institute my own Honour:

The OVE - Member of the Ordinary Van Echelon

This is the proposed form of the badge and motto. I could run it by the College of Arms but I doubt they would approve - the heraldry is unconventional to say the least.

Qualifications for membership of the Echelon:


• The candidate must be a Ford Transit, with previous ownerships taken into consideration
• The candidate Transit must be ordinary, i.e. a 'stock' van with factory-fitted accessories
• The candidate's driver must be a member of this Forum
• The candidate's driver must have a good sense of humour
• The judge's decision is final, depending on the size of the brown envelope

It's not the first of April, it's the first of January, so Happy New Year to all Forum members!

[winterheating]

You are doing a grand job vee4.

[ake]

Happy new year to the Ordinary Van and custodian, from the toy Transit and custodian

[Vee4]

Highlights from 2011

A list of personal favourites from the Diary, in case you don't have time to read the whole lot - I know I don't:

• Review of 2010
  Nostalgia is better than it used to be.
  
• The 2010 and 2011 New Year Resolutions
  How well did we do? Not very well, obviously.
  
  
• Bill Hicks sees in the New Year
  
  
• Getting Burned?
  
  
• The first GBP100 fill up
  You'll need two of these:
  
  
• Genesis
  Not Phil Collins.
  
  
• Jack out of a box
  And how to put it back ...
  
  
• A Mighty Wind
  No more curried eggs for me.
  
  
• Two Years
  No mid-term blues here.
  
  
• You are Lobby Lud and I claim my ...
  Still unclaimed!
  
  
• Transits in the Space Age
  
  
• It all started with Fig Rolls
  Still as funny - The Ultimate Dog Tease.
  
  
• Tennyson on Tyres
  There's something in the air.
  
  
• The end of the line?
  Or the start of something big?
  
  
• Where's Byron?
  He's gone a roving (in his Transit).
  
  
• Déjà Blue again
  
  
• Pylon Spotting for beginners
  
  
• Boaring!
  Late nights at the Blue Boar.
  
  
• Who is the Daddy? The L6!
  A great British classic.
  
  
• Transits on the Moon
  They get everywhere!
  
  
• It's a winner
  And the pylon.
  
  
• I have seen the light!
  Hallelujah.
  
  
• New Year in New York
  Complimentary tickets available for the Titanic crossing.
  
  
• The Ordinary Van gets a gong
  
  
• The End

[transitandy]

Bravo old chap out with 2011 and in with 2012

[Vee4]

Now you see them, now you don't

You could say that about your lesser spotted columnist but my excuse is that I've been busy catching up after the so-called holiday. In fact, I refer to the side lamps (terminology from Ford handbook) and the number plate lamps:



I always check the lighting before setting off at night and I recently found the front left side lamp was off (clear envelope in picture). A sharp slap on the housing woke it up but that could only mean one thing: a fractured filament. They are all the same age (two years) so that meant they should all be checked and changed. I found one number plate lamp (printed envelope) failed when slapped so I changed the whole lot. These lamps would seem ideal candidates for LED replacement but the ultimate authority has deemed that to contravene the regulations. I'll make a point of changing these every two years along with the headlamps.

The Ordinary Van is doing well and no serious problems. Obviously, the lamps are starting to go and occasionally the door contacts are not quite there so the locking system doesn't respond properly. There are a couple of oil leaks which I'll point out at the next routine service:

This one is not new, of course:

This one developed in the last few months:

[Vee4]

Burns Night



It has become traditional to mention Burns Night (or Salmond's Sunset as it is soon to be known) in the Diary:

2010, 2011 and here we are in 2012.

I've renewed my Sporran Licence and my passport, so I'm all ready for my next trip to Scotland in the Ordinary Van.

Why not celebrate this year by listening to Scotland's First Minister read Burns' A Man's a Man for A' That and pick up some handy hints for your Burns Night party on the BBC website?

e.g. piping in the new fuel filter:

[Vee4]

I used to be Uncertain but now I'm not so sure

What made me think of Werner Heisenberg and his famous Uncertainty Principle?




If you take a flash photo of a falling snowflake, you know exactly where it is, but you don't know how fast it is moving (upper photo). If you take a photo with a slow shutter, you have some idea how fast the snowflake is moving but you don't know exactly where it is (lower photo)!

As stated in the Wikipedia article, "In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known. In layman's terms, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be controlled, determined, or known."

The old physicist's joke has it that Heisenberg was one day driving rather too fast (in his Transit, of course) and when stopped by the Polizei, they asked if he knew how fast he was going (as they do). He replied, "No, but I do know exactly where I am!" You could always try that line next time you are pulled over.

Next week: Schrödinger's cat is accidentally locked in the back of a Transit, with paradoxical consequences ...

[ake]

The ordinary van must be very busy, I have had to post this to stop it falling from page 1

[AlanN]

Does it deserve it then... thought we were going to be put out of our misery

[transitandy]

Oh yeah tis an interesting thread
with pylons and the blue boar services

[Vee4]

Dead unLucky?

Thanks to everyone for your concern, and yes, the Ordinary Van has been busy, along with its owner. You may have thought that I was following in the footsteps (or tyre tracks, possibly) of the elusive Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, aka Lord 'Lucky' Lucan. It's surprising how this story still fascinates, nearly 40 years after his disappearance.



A recent BBC Inside Out South East programme claimed to reveal new evidence that the fugitive Lucan was living in Africa, and a former copper stated that his attempt to follow up on a credible sighting had been quashed by his superiors, hinting at an 'establishment' cover up. His brother, Hugh Bingham, recently broke his silence to claim that Lucan had made it to Africa and could still be alive (he would be 76).

There are many claims and counter-claims, but surely the most prosaic is the use of a Ford Corsair as the getaway car!



This Corsair was powered by the Essex V4 so beloved of early Transit owners. Mind you, Lucan would have sacrificed valuable fuel economy by running with that roof rack in place - so much for his green credentials. The Corsair was found abandoned in Newhaven, but even that has its own conspiracy theory: it was a decoy!

More BBC archive material: The legend of Lucan.

Huffington Post: links to the story, or mystery if you like!

Anyway, more postings are in the pipeline, including the fate of Schrödinger's cat, and the announcement of this year's featured item of infrastructure. Time is on my side ...

[transitandy]

Intresting is he still alive i reckon we'll never find out
A good read never the less

[Vee4]

Daydream Believer

The Monkees began their career with auditions in 1965, the year that a new type of van known as the Ford Transit was being auditioned by the British van-driving community. The Monkees heyday was from 1966 to 1970 and during those years I was daydreaming about owning one of the remarkable new vehicles.



Daydream Believer was The Monkees' last Number One in the USA. Davy Jones, whose untimely death was announced yesterday, provided the opening banter and lead vocal.

My dream came true. I hope Davy Jones' did too ...

[Vee4]

Amelia, it was just a false alarm ...

Last Sunday*, I had convinced myself that I would be sure to finish my VAT Return (I do love working as an unpaid tax collector for George) and I definitely would not: go for a run or wash the Ordinary Van (which was covered in road salt). I had returned from London in the early hours and in the Ordinary Van [Note to editor: this is a zeugma, used for comic effect - oh, how we laughed!] and when I looked out in the daylight, the weather was fine and sunny, so I immediately: went for a run and washed the Ordinary Van.



At one point, my chosen run emerged from a wooded area into an open field. The sky was clear and blue with nothing but contrails. This sight always starts me off on Joni Mitchell's Amelia** from the Hejira album:

"... I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain"

Or:

"I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms"



The song was inspired by the exploits of American aviatrix, Amelia Earhart. Currently on the Ordinary Van's bookshelf, waiting to be read, is a new biography of Earhart: Amelia Earhart - The Turbulent Life of an American Icon by Kathleen C. Winters, published in 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan. It's interesting to note how there is always fascination in an unexplained disappearance, as with Earhart and Lord Lucan! Winters was herself a qualified pilot and flying instructor. Sadly, she died in August 2010 and the book was published posthumously.



Now, the farms of Leicestershire are not particularly geometric, unlike those of Mitchell's childhood Saskatchewan or the American mid-west, but Sunday's run did take me near the home of Engelbert Humperdinck. He is one of Leicestershire's most famous residents, along with the Ordinary Van, so his selection as the performer of the UK entry for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest is great news. No doubt, we'll follow his progress (in a Transit, possibly) to Baku in these pages.

Please release me, I hear you say. OK, that's all for now ...

* Had to do this today, before another Sunday came and went!
** Spot the deliberate mistake(s) in the lyric sheet. There may be a prize, or there may not.