2015 Subaru WRX STI on TT course

Here’s a quick (in more ways than one) video of Subaru driver Mark Higgins driving that company’s latest WRX STI vehicle around the Isle of Man TT course, rather nippily.

Of particular interest is the footage about a minute in of the previous record that he set in 2011 and his comment that they “had a big moment; basically the car just got a little bit of of shape…”.

This “moment” stuff is motorsport parlance, of course. There are two types of moment in this context. You can either have “a bit of a moment”, or you can have “a big moment”. For most of us mere mortals, “a bit of a moment” would be more than enough for us to require, at least, a change of underwear and several months of industrial-strength counselling. This, I’ll remind you, was “a big moment”.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, looking at that bit of the video, it’s evident that Mark’s version of:

a little bit out of shape…

and mine also differ significantly. Superb driving control though. What a save.

Anyway, well worth 7 minutes of your valuable time, if just for the camerawork, the details of the car and the driver and the occasional Manx countryside.

Fiercely Independent

This was shared by @JonJonFaull last night, and deserves a blog post all of its own:

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Yes, as Davy C should really know, while Scotland is still a part of the UK, the Isle of Man certainly isn’t, and never has been. And that means that it’s not part of the EU either.

This self-governing crown dependency makes its own decisions, like imposing its own sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea. Yeah. What are you gonna do about it, Vlad?

There are, however, some similarities between Cameron’s place and the Isle of Man when it comes to sport, namely that the Manx cricket team isn’t great (Manx lose to Norway in Euros) and the national football team isn’t great in penalty shootouts (Ellan Vannin heroes lose final on spot kicks).

But that little green dot twixt England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales above is well used to punching above its belt and rightly, it has no problem with telling No.10 where to go.

UPDATE: Downing Street apologises!

Flood Fun

Once the near Biblical weather of last night had subsided, I was taken for a ride, literally, by my boy.

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Many of the paths around Tokai Forest were similarly waterlogged, and we spent a couple of hours riding through them and getting thoroughly wet.

It was a good way to spend a Father’s Day afternoon, but the hot shower afterwards was much needed.

Waze’s World Cup nods

I’m a regular Wazer these days and I’m finding it more and more useful as more and more people join up. Not so much for the rush hour traffic, but it’s proven its worth on journeys back from Agulhas and also for avoiding those unexpected delays caused by stuff like roadworks and accidents.

Anyway, for no apparent reason other than the sheer joy of the World Cup, Waze has given us a couple of nice little touches this week:

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Firstly, the Ready to go? screen now comes with striking Brazilian gold and green colouring and a football to boot (pun intended). And then there’s the option to change your Waze icon to show your support for your chosen team. This seemed to work well for a couple of days – I even saw a Ecuador fan on the Main Road in Kenilworth – but now many of the icons seem to have been replaced with giant footballs.
I’m not sure why this has happened, but it is quite cool to see a multitude of 1980-style footballs making their way around Cape Town.

If you want to join in the fun (and avoid the traffic) download Waze free from Google Play Store.

Remember 2010…?

With the World Cup “kicking off” in Brazil this evening, everyone is going all misty-eyed over those Halcyon days in 2010 when we enjoyed Philip’s visit here. I’ve chosen to mark my memories with a photo of a free kick from the worst game I think I’ve seen since moving to South Africa – England’s bore draw with Algeria at Cape Town Stadium.

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England’s chances this year seem slim (not like in 2010, when they had a superb qualifying campaign), but perhaps because of that, they find themselves free of the weight of expectation. Or rather they did.
Up until about two weeks ago, everyone back in Blighty had completely accepted that this wasn’t a tournament in which England were going to go far; expectation – traditionally an albatross around the teams’ collective necks – was at an all time low and that was a Good Thing.
Sadly, about a fortnight back, someone in the papers noticed this and remarked on it, probably saying something along the lines of:

Without the fans’ expectations on their minds, England could actually do quite well in Brazil.

This in itself, raised expectations and thus was a self-defeating prophecy. But then again, maybe if people see that the low expectations of success have raised the expectations of success, and that that approach will, in turn, increase the pressure on the team and thus lower the expectation that they will do well, maybe they will do well.

Not that I want to raise expectations of that.

The other thing that has made the British press is the state of some of the stadiums going into the tournament, most specifically Manaus, where England play Italy on Saturday. Now, we saw some scare stories from hysterical journalists all over South Africa 2010, but it does seem that we were a whole lot better prepared than Brazil is:

Carlos Botella, head groundsman for the Royal Verd company which is responsible for the turf at Manaus and six other World Cup stadiums, has conceded that the game on Saturday, which will take place in severe heat and humidity, will be played out on a desperately inadequate surface.
“Frankly, Manaus is in bad shape,” Botella told the Associated Press. “We’ve started to implement an emergency plan to try to save the field and improve it as much as possible, but I don’t think it’ll be in good condition by the weekend.”

No worries, Carlos. You’ve only had several years to prepare, so yes, get that emergency plan into operation 72 hours ahead of the first game. We’d been playing football and rugby in our stadiums 4 months before the 2010 World Cup got started.

Worryingly, while I’m looking forward to having some footy back on the TV, I’m rather unexcited about the whole World Cup. Maybe it’s the time difference. Maybe it’s the fact that last time around was Just So Good.
I just hope that I can get into it soon. I’d hate to not enjoy the whole 4 weeks.