Leisure

New cars are nice aren’t they? Especially when they are yours… but the next best thing is when they are your partners! And double nice when your partner has the great good sense and fine taste to go for a new MG TF 160.

Yes, I admit it, I am a rag top man at heart. I used to drive an MG Midget many years ago (rubber bumpers, so not too long ago) and it was one of the great joys – particularly in the spring and summer months. If I couldn’t go on a motorbike, I would go in the midget… and what fun it was!

So I am hoping that there will be some kind of nostalgic return to those heady days over the coming year.

The big issue here is do you go out and get all of those lovely new bits for the car even though it has clocked just 40 miles from new? A case in point is the heater control knobs – all a bit plastic looking, and so easily replaced with brushed aluminium ones, and a windshield to add that extra comfort and protection when bombing along the open roads. But just where do you go for your extras these days? The MG owners’ club seems still to be servicing the needs of the older and original MGs, and a few places are selling parts for the Mk1 MG ‘F’ series. It takes a decent search on google to find a company selling bits for the MG TF though…

I found this one, which has exceptional service, I think – Mike Satur

I rang them on Friday afternoon to order some of the aforementioned heater controls as a special surprise gift for the new car (well, for Kara, actually), and expected them on Monday. They arrived early on Saturday morning, so I have had to hide them for a couple of days! The sentimental part of me thought they would make a good Valentine gift… don’t laugh – it isn’t too long ago that I decided the kitchen was no place for a motorbike engine!

Anyway, give Mike Satur a go if you are looking for TF parts…

Last week I returned the DVD that I got from Harrods and left it with a chap called Ben. He assured me he would sort out the problem, but didn’t give me a receipt at all. I was to trust him on his word (and why wouldn’t I? This is Harrods after all…)

On Friday Ben rang me to let me know that the replacement DVD was in stock and that he would be sending it out to me free of charge. If all goes well I should have the DVD by the middle of next week – I’ll wait until Wednesday to see what happens, but I am continuing to be impressed by Harrods customer service!

Good news today – after a long wait and a lot of hard work, my partner, Kara, received a letter from the National College for School Leadership informing her that she has been successful and passed her NPQH!

For those that don’t know, NPQH is the National Professional Qualification for Headship in the UK, and will probably very soon be a mandatory requirement for anyone intending to be a headteacher. Even if you are not, doing the course can help in so many ways if you are working as part of the leadership team in a school. I am thrilled for her!

Oh – and NPQH was developed and designed as one of the projects at Ultralab some time ago… part of the course is participation in an online community discussion – the development of which also grew into one of Ultralab’s largest national projects. The software was originally run by Oracle as ‘think.com’ and this was developed further by NCSL as ‘talk2learn’.

I didn’t get the opportunity to study it as I was appointed to headship before I could enrol, but I would thoroughly recommend it all the same!

Well done Kara!

After Christmas many folk tend to start a diet. I have not really ever had any good experiences with diets because I enjoy food too much.

Now what really annoys me is the way obesity is measured. If I go to my doctor he tells me I am obese – which is almost fair enough since I do carry some additional padding (although I don’t think of myself as obese – overweight certainly… but not obese). However he then goes on to tell me that for my height I need to be 11 stone in weight, at which point I tell him it just isn’t going to happen, he tuts, I walk out.

BMI is calculated by dividing your weight by your height squared (BMI = W/hxh). It takes no consideration of physique, background history or anything like that. Simply put, if you are short, you need to be slight, and if you are tall, you can afford to have a few additional pounds to carry.

I think this is nonsense. We have many different body shapes among us – endomorphs, ectomorphs, mesomorphs. I have always been the latter. hard luck for mesomorphs then, your BMI will always inform your doctor that you need to lose weight!

In my case the doctor recommends I attempt to return to the weight I was when I was 12 years old. Apparently that would be good for me. I haven’t been anywhere near 11 stone since I was twelve, and spent the majority of my twenties being 13 stone – with not an ounce of fat, and enjoying a robust sporting life. Apparently that doesn’t count!

Right now I’d be delighted to be 14 stone – that would be a significant achievement… but not according to my doctor (who, by the way, could do with losing a few stone himself).

I took the children to Harrods recently – just before the new year – and they had a fantastic time looking around all of the departments. Of course, the toy department held a certain fascination!

There are numerous restaurants and cafes dotted throughout the store and the escalator in the middle is a sight to see.

We purchased several things on the day, including a DVD of the England vs Australia rugby world cup final (2003) but when we got into the car to leave we found that the DVD was missing a disc of the two, and the one that remained was broken near the centre spindle hole. My son was, quite naturally, very disappointed.

I rang Harrods and amazingly was put right through instantly to not only the department but the salesman I dealt with. He offered several solutions (including me returning to the store – I wasn’t about to pay another NCP charge!) but was very keen to put matters right. Unfortunately there wasn’t another copy of the DVD in stock, but they would order it for me.

Well, that was over a week ago and I had heard nothing. I rang them again and this time spoke to customer services who put me right through to the same salesman. He was really helpful again and said that he would chase it for me personally, but I would now need to speak to the CD/DVD department. I did – again, super helpful and polite they wasted no time in recording the matter and promising to get hold of another copy if at all possible…

Now, I am not normally known for my patience with these things, and would by now have asked for a refund if it wasn’t for two things. First, My son really wanted the DVD and it was kind of like a Christmas present for him. Second, Harrods staff are among the most polite and helpful I have ever had to deal with. It was worth waiting to see just what they would be able to do!

We left it that I would go to the store next week and speak to the salesman personally, and we would sort it out that way. How refreshing to have such a high level of customer focus instead of the usual uninformed sales folk at the majority of department stores. Harrods is as near to me (in time and mileage) as Bluewater is, and despite the parking and congestion charges is no more expensive… so why do I go to Bluewater?

Of course, I haven’t had the refund or replacement yet, so we’ll see what the next installment brings!