Today Alison and I went for a test drive in the Lotus Emira at Bell & Colvill and … well, we both loved it!
A ‘spirited’ drive around Surrey showed the car handles and steers impeccably and obviously has the oomph when you want it. Glorious!
So we had a test drive – finally! – in the Lotus Emira today and afterwards, wondered what the car might look like with the Nimbus Grey paint, rather than Magma Red…
This is from the car configurator (and yes, we drove that road in Big Sur in the summer of 2022, but in a Mustang convertible):
Yes, here it is: my blog for the Lotus Emira First Edition 2.5V6.
I’m considering changing my Abarth 124 Spider for one of these whilst Lotus still make internal combustion engined, manual gearboxed, cars.
Our test drives are arranged for when we’re back in the UK: both Mrs RHM and I would be driving the Emira, so it’s important we both try it out.
I’ve been monitoring my weight – albeit somewhat loosely at times – with Garmin Connect since 26 August 2011 (apparently) when my weight was 93.3kg (14st 10lbs) and I was starting out on my fitness journey.
After getting off to a good start thanks to running and then adding some cycling, my weight fell to 85.1kg (13st 6lbs) by the end of January 2012, but began to rise gradually into 2014, falling back again in 2015 with a low of 84.1kg (14st 3lbs) before we went off to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Ko Samui. 2015 was also when we ran the Berlin Marathon.
My weight then gradually rose – with a big dip in the summer of 2018 for our wedding – until late June 2019 when it hit 95.4kg (15st). And then the crash happened… A month laying in bed eating pureed food meant that my leg muscles atrophied so by the time I weighed myself in August 2019, my weight had fallen to 85.8kg (13st 7lbs).
The aftermath of the crash affecting my mobility and exercise capability coupled with our love of eating well and lots of travel – for work and pleasure – meant that one more my weight gradually increased, peaking at 99.3kg (15st 9lbs) in October 2021.
It stayed pretty constant after that until last summer when my knee was becoming particular painful with the necrosis that had been diagnosed back in 2012. That had affected my ability to run, so I saw my consultant privately again and he encouraged me to do more cycling (also referring me to a sports physiotherapist who’s excellent) and to lose some weight, possibly trying some fasting or kept dieting. That led to the purchase of a fixed cycle and that explains the manic cycling, both indoor and in the real world since.
So since August 2022’s high of 98.2kg (15st 6lb), trying to limit my carbohydrates and this exercise (with some riding challenges to keep things interesting), I today hit 85.3kg (13st 6lbs), so that’s two stones lost since August and my second target of 85kg in sight (about 1lb to go). Once I hit that, the next target is likely to be 80kg, or roughly 12½ stone.
Whilst I was in the USA doing the Pacific Coast Highway in a 5.0L V8 Mustang Convertible, I thought it was long overdue for Blue Rex to have some care and attention, so it was off to Larry at PDQ to give it a good fettle and its MoT.
And it really was a good fettle: the old Datatool alarm was finally consigned to the bin, as was the battery. The carbs were basically overhauled and a couple of pipes and o-rings were replaced. There was a new chain and sprocket set. There was a new set of tyres to replace those that were on there that were many years old and had all the grip of Donald Trump.
It was then MoT’d and it passed with a mileage of 19,462 which was 40 miles up from last year’s and was basically the mileage out of London to PDQ.
Whilst at PDQ, Larry whacked it on the dyno to see how it measured up, some 11 years after the team at PDQ had breathed on it. 154.89bhp at 10,100rpm (158.37bhp) and 90.5lb/ft of torque at 7,830rpm (91.5lb/ft), 2011 figures in brackets.
It’s a new dyno – so not necessarily a true like-for-like comparison – but it’s still close to what it was putting out before, which is pleasing.
I used my disabled person’s Freedom Pass to get there, so it cost me nothing and the ride back was lovely: back in a little over an hour (with a fuel stop) thanks to filtering and people working from home.
You know it’ll be a great spam email when the subject line says “This isn’t spam! Amend your record for FREE NOW!!” (loving the double exclamation marks).
Oh yes, Acquirz Limited with its two directors Christopher Skinner and Russell Wilmot – who run a number of similar companies – sent me a couple of blatant spam messages in which they try to legitimise what they do … and fail miserably.
“You are receiving this email as we believe it may be relevant to you in your professional role and we believe your business will benefit.
“Your business and personal contact data has been collected from publicly available records such as websites and government records and combined with data from third-party data providers and is being processed on the basis of Acquirz’s legitimate interests and those of our data partners and customers.
“These interests include our direct marketing and sharing your data with our data partners and selling it to our customers for their business marketing campaigns. You can read more about these interests and how you can exercise your rights in our Privacy Notice.
“If you would like to opt out, please unsubscribe using the link below.
Click here to unsubscribe“Kind regards
Acquirz Ltd”
So in other words they’ve either harvested the email addresses or bought a spam list from another spammer.
On their website they say “The opportunity and potential for Acquirz is awesome” whilst their last published accounts indicate that that’s clearly all unrealised!
One of the regular spammers I’m seeing these days is an outfit is someone calling themselves Properties4less.
Every day there seem to be new ones with desperate pleas to invest in some shithole, usually up North. Â The latest is Bristol though.
Typically for a spammer, their website is pretty blank as all the crap is in various pages with tracking details enabled.
Also typically, they lie:
“You have received this email because you have subscribed to Properties4less”
No, I really didn’t…
So I’ve been receiving regular emails from Aztec Events for ages now and most recently it’s their All About Dogs Show.
This is of absolutely no interest to me as a) I hate show ground events and b) I don’t have a dog. But that still doesn’t stop their interminable spam from flooding in.
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