H Bomb

NO!!!!!! We are blue, not green :-)

I'm an IT technical engineer for a car transporter company in Carlisle Love: the banter with all the different departments, from traffic, to claims, to the workshop. Also seeing new Skodas going past the window on their way to their new homes / dealerships. Oh and the fact that the air musuem over the road from us has an Avro Vulcan pointed our way! :-) Hate: The rudeness of some of the people from one or two car manufacturers (non VAG group, I hasten to add!)- if someone has a problem, let us know, don't start a massive rant about nothing - it just delays us getting to work on the issue!

Rikki Fulton was a legend, and this Last Call was one of his bests! Thanks for reminding me! :-)

Well, its been a long time since I happily sold my Mk1 Fabia vRS SE (it was surprisingly a Friday afternoon job - don't ask!), bringing to end many years of Skoda ownership, which included a Felicia and three Fabias. Since then I've had an Altea (loved it to bits), a VW Caddy (in vRS blue!) and a company car - Honda Civic (reliable, great on fuel, but rather boring). So, after accepting a new job offer yesterday (this job does not have a car as part of the package), I find myself back in Skoda world! I've bought a lovely little white Fabia Monte Carlo and can't wait to collect him! Tis good to be back guys, been away faaaaar too long! Heather

Cheers for that - called in tonight and found he'd sorted it himself - he might be retired now but once a mechanic, always a mechanic hehehe Will try and find out how he did it...

Hello My dad's 63 plate Roomster has just been in for service and they have forgotten to reset the maintenance counter on it, so the spanner is still showing on the dash. I remembered how to switch this off on the older models (ones with a twiddly stick thing under the rev counter), but his has two buttons, one with a picture of some squares on (clock set) and one with'0.0' on it. I've tried Pressing the 0.0 button, switching on ignition, releasing the button the pressing the other one, then switching off and on again (worked on my Caddy that had these buttons), but still the spanner shows up. Any ideas? Cheers! Heather

I was following a VW Transporter of a fair old age, but still lookin fab nevertheless - and noticed it had a sticker in the back windows that said 'I'd rather push a Volkswagen than drive a Ford' The day before I saw a gleaming 2CV sporting this sticker - 'Live Fast, Die Young, Own a 2CV? Live Slow, Last Forever'

Depeche Mode - Ultra, and Violator. And occasionally a bit of 90s britpop :-) And there's nowt wrong with West Sound (well last few months have gone downhill) - I discovered Simple Minds via them! :-)

I know it's been bliss! T'other half is an ultra runner and he left his car in Keswick yesterday... To run home to Carlisle (nutcase), so I had the daunting task of taking him back to retrieve his car this morning... Bank holiday Monday in the lakes wasn't my idea of fun... But when we got there it was surprisingly quiet! I even found somewhere for myself to park so we could have a picnic before heading back! Return journey brought us back down to earth... Sunday driver mode everywhere! Ah well, was nice while it lasted :-)

Yeah BIK is a lot lower than if I was given a van, and fuel consumption much better, think it's a no brainer now I've had a couple of days to mull it over. Thanks all of you for your opinions / info on your civic experiences, makes me feel a bit happier knowing more about the vehicle! Will see if I can go for a run in one tomoro at work :-)

Yeah - pretty nifty idea! Love the way they flip up to give you all that loadspace, I did wonder at first why my boss didn't just give me another van, but compared to what it's replacing (Peugeot 207 van), the space is a massive plus for us.

Thanks for the info! I had a look round one today and was struck by how much room there is in the back, which is good as I lug around a lot of printers / servers (I'm an IT engineer). It'll also be capable of taking my bikes out at weekends which was a worry if I sold the Caddy. Seems solidly built too compared with one or two jap cars I've had as courtesy cars at work so looking good so far... :-)

I've been given promotion at work and part of the package is a company car. As a life long driver of VAG group cars (and many French vans at work hehehe)I haven't a clue what a Civic would be like. The offer is for a Civic SE 1.6 diesel. I would be looking to sell my VW Caddy (no room on the drive at home for 3 cars, and it only moves once a week), so I would be sacrificing (and saving) a fair amount if I accepted the offer. Any previous experience of Civics would be great! Cheers

Everything Counts - Depeche Mode

I had number 461, convinced a previous owner had bumped it as the front bumper always looked slightly out of alignment. Was amazing on fuel (best was 73mpg on a run through Yorkshire), though it had a fair number of niggles - rear spoiler paint delaminated at 3 years old, radio had a fault with its aerial (worked when it wanted, even after going to the dealer), had the accelerator pedal replaced at 2 1/2 years old as it wouldn't return fully all the time (fun at roundabouts!). Apart from that, was a decent enough little car, I traded it as I needed a bigger vehicle for travelling to cycling events and wanted to put the bike inside etc.

This did - Herman the German, my little Caddy, in Ravenna Blue (better known as Race Blue?!)

Are you training for a race or a specific distance etc? I'm a marathoner and ironman (or should that be ironwoman?!) and I've found that to get quicker at running, you still need a decent amount of carbs, but need to modify your run training. 1 speed work session, a steady paced run and a long slow run per week would be a good base to build on. If you need any help with training plans etc just gimme a shout!

Interesting reading this, it made me stop and price up my collection in my head - I have 3 Garmins (my excuse - I'm an ironman triathlete with a weakness for gadgets!), that combined come to just over £1000, and a posh Rotary that only gets let out for special occasions, as it totalled nearly the same as the three Garmins! The Garmins I would say have been worth every penny, the Rotary may have been a wee bit extravagant, but rocking up to a wedding or a special occasion sporting an Alexander McQueen dress and a bright green bashed up GPS watch was never going to be a trend that would catch on, unless Bear Grylls was to take up cross dressing!

T'other half swearing whilst building our new wardrobe! But mostly The Black Keys - Lonely Boy

Thanks spud31 thats brilliant! I know what I'm doing at the weekend now hehehehe

I'm calling out to anyone out there with a current model VW Caddy C20 1.6 TDi - basically I'm wanting to change the air and oil filters on my little Caddy (it had its 20k / 2 year service last year and is still a very long way off the 40k / 4 year service, but does a lot of short trips), and I can see how to do the air one no problem... but where on earth is the oil filter?! I even had my dad have a nosey under the bonnet (he's a retired HGV engineer) and his reply was 'f**k knows'! I imagine its probably dead easy to find if you know where to look, any help would be greatly appreciated! Heather

Seat - tho I'm biased I've got an Altea lol

Lol!!! Lucky escape hehehe! I like the job when I'm out and about at different sites, meeting customers and seeing different setups. The boring bit is usually being stuck in the office trying to remote onto customer's kit, and sometimes even THAT is too challenging for customers to comprehend! I often thought it would be nice to be doing IT on one site, as you could have almost full control of everything that went on day in day out, but I think I'd miss getting out on the roads - the perks for me are that I get to travel all over the Lake District, Yorkshire and South West Scotland - and theres almost always a nice view to pull up at for your lunch hehehehe!

I've been working in IT since I was 19 (9 years) and only the last 3 or 4 years have I made progress. Started off at the bottom - PC World technician - what a DUMP! Learned more about the Dixons Group returns policy than anything, since then I've worked for 3 local IT companies and only really started to progress at the last 2. Its difficult to push on in this kind of industry, a few times I've thought about chucking it in, but I got a lucky break at my present company as a network engineer and am now working towards a Microsoft MCSE (not bad for a Mac worshipper lol). Hope things work out for u, at times IT can be the most soul destroying and stressful job on the planet, but mostly the good times outweigh the bad. Helluva lot of us techies on here aren't there?!