China's Shiny Button

At this point in the F1 season in 2009, Jenson Button was leading the championship. Fast forward a year and the story is the same. But what's more surprising is that Button now has 2 wins driving for McLaren whilst Hamilton has none. Lewis is becoming so desperate to emulate his older (and wiser?) team-mate, he's even taken to growing a daft beard. Give it up Lewis - you look like you rested your chin on a freshly painted table.

China saw not only Jenson win again, but the Red Bull team once more score a pole (this time with Vettel) only to see it slip away, with Seb only managing 6th and Webber 8th. And what a race it was - rain coming and going and two safety car periods, plus the new Red Baron (step forward Fernando.. Oh, you already have) getting a start that was just a bit too nippy for the stewards. Mind you, 4 pit stops and a drive-through penalty still saw him finish in 4th, so it wasn't exactly a wasted afternoon. Hamilton and Vettel tried to drive along the same bit of pit lane at the same time and have been reprimanded by the stewards. As this doesn't actually mean a penalty of any sort, I guess they had to stand in the corner of the naughty room for a bit without talking and think about what they did. Or something.

Massa is probably still wondering what the hell happened when naughty 'Nando decided to overtake him on the pit-lane entry. Let's face it - even a clairvoyant wasn't going to see that one coming.

Button again showed his level head by staying out on the slick tyres in the early rain and successfully managing his tyre wear whilst those around him started having problems. Cheeky super-slow driving before the restart after a safety car period went un-penalised and a small off-track excursion with 5 laps to go proved unable to curb him either, although the last few laps saw Hamilton reel him in, but by then both of them looked like they were driving on a skid-pan, or attempting to avoid the pot-holes on an average British A-road, so knackered were their intermediate tyres.

Honourable mention to another driver outperforming his supposedly better team mate. Nico Rosberg's stock is now sky high following the fourth race of out-qualifying and then finishing ahead of his team mate, one M. Schumacher. Not many of Schuey's former team-mates can say that. Come to think of it... can ANY of them say that? 3rd place for Nico saw him emulating Button's knack for clever use of his tyre choices and leaves him second in the Championship too. Nice work, fella!

So Jenson's back to the front. At the end of 2008, would you have said Button would have a championship under his belt with one team, and now be leading it with McLaren against Alonso in Ferrari, Schumacher and everyone else? I'd have laughed at you. A lot.

Mind you, I'd probably still laugh at you now.... but not because of Formula 1...

Hello to Claire, who has become follower number 4 of this blog and wants to get married at one of the poles (my Geography isn't very good. Nor is my memory. I can't remember if it's North or South). You're bonkers, but I like your style! Welcome.

(A nice new 3CD box set called 12"/80s: Electro Pop dropped through my letterbox last week. Jolly good it is too. There are quite a few I've never heard before, including the 12" version of Landscape's Einstein A Go Go. Way cool. Right now, The Art Of Noise are Close To The Edit. Hey!)

Faking it for real

As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...

Going Underground

The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

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