Evasive Driving, The Luxury Way

You may have seen the video at the end of my entry on here “And now the Shipping Forecast“ in which the chaps from Lusso Magazine were driving a trio of Ferraris back to Blighty.

At the end of said blog entry I also mentioned there would be more videos to come, namely a “cool evasive driving video filmed by a very good friend of mine, Jonny Jones.”

Now, Jonny and I have been friends for years and he – handily – lives very close to me (his garden backs onto mine as it happens). He’s been making videos, mainly trials videos, for a couple of years now and has become rather good at it. As is always the way though, he’s never had much exposure and being a friend of mine, I like to help them progress with business where I can.

So, when the publishing director of Lusso mentioned they were interested in providing their readers with more online videos to go alongside their features, I felt it a prime opportunity to recommend Monsieur Jones and his skills.

The result of which is the following:

Chris West, a regular contributor to Lusso Magazine, heads to an undisclosed location in the middle of the country to meet up with ex-special forces officer Dave Thomas for lessons in evasive driving. Dave, MD of Spy Games and a private security company talks us through the manoeuvres, his opinion on the new Cadillac SRX4 and the Hummer H3. Fred Smith, an evasive driving expert runs us through the technique for the perfect J-Turn, a move that allows the car to move from a fast reverse to normal, forward motion in one continuous swing.

“And now the Shipping Forecast”

Recently I’ve been keeping abreast of the weather by listening to the Shipping Forecast, something I’ve not done for years and I’d missed its late-night (not like that!) appeal. There’s something soothing and refreshing about its strict and – to outsiders – strange format.

For anyone reading this who has no idea what I’m talking about, the Shipping Forecast is a four-times-daily radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around Britain and Ireland; these are split into 31 different areas as you can see from the map on the right. Handily, on the day in question, you can see there are gale warnings in all areas. This does make it easier to spot the boundaries. I think the appeal also comes from the terms used and the format of the delivery – for example: Humber, Thames. Southeast veering southwest 4 or 5, occasionally 6 later. Thundery showers. Moderate or good, occasionally poor - and also the names of the areas which are as follows (and in order):

Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Trafalgar, FitzRoy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faeroes and lastly, Southeast Iceland.

If you’ve become intrigued and wish to listen to the Shipping Forecast you can listen online at BBC Radio 4 at 00:48 GMT. I find this is the best airing as it’s one of two aired on FM rather than LW, the other being aired at 05:20 GMT which I’m not awake for.

Anyway, veering on. There are a couple of things I’ve been meaning to blog about for the past few days but whenever I’ve come to start writing my mind has switched off and the blog has gone nowhere. I’m bordering on that tonight but not because of a mind blank, but because I was unaware the word “blog” could be used in a sexual context. It was brought to my attention by a friend of mine and I proceeded to test the theory in my typically suave fashion as you can see below, under her name.

This is news to me but intriguing nonetheless. Do any of you have any thoughts on the matter? Is or can “blog/blogging” be used in a sexual or seductive reference? I think if Kate Beckinsale were to ask me if I’d like to blog with her, while motioning to a bed with an inviting wink, it could be taken to be somewhat seductive.

Amongst the other things I’ve been occupying my time with lately, the Xbox 360 has taken up a fair bit of it. I’ve been teaching people maps on Call Of Duty 4, honing the set up of cars on Forza Motorsport 2 and generally racing and fighting people on both games.

A big milestone was finding a good setup for the Lamborghini Gallardo on Forza (pictured above, for a larger version, click here – the design was done by me and is of the Italian Police Gallardo, if you’d like the design on your Forza Gallardo, email me at graham@letmerephrasethat.com) which allowed it to be held in controllable powerslides for some time.

My ‘creative associate’ (who I’ve mentioned before in this blog) managed to sort out a set up for the suspension whilst I worked on honing the perfect levels of power and grip to compliment his set up. As you can see from the picture, I think we’ve cracked it. Also, if you’d like the set up for the Gallardo, email me on the above address.

And lastly, before I finish typing and head to the land of nod. The chaps at the magazine I sometimes write for – www.LussoLuxury.com – have recently begun to expand their video library to accompany their articles. One of these videos is now online here at YouTube.

If you would be so kind as to watch it and leave a comment and a rating (the last two are important!) I’d be very thankful. If you’d like to subscribe, that’d be fantastic too. Stay tuned for more videos, a cool evasive driving video filmed by a very good friend of mine, Jonny Jones, will be going up soon.

I’ve just noticed the word count for this blog is (well, was, before I added this and the Kate Beckinsale reference) sitting at 666, I feel this is a good time for me to leave you be.

Goodnight.

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