Mongolian Death Worm versus...

I found out today on the growing Mongol Rally Forum about the rather terrifying Mongolian Death Worm, reported to live in the Gobi Desert. At 1.5m long and possessing a ready supply of sulphuric acid to burn its victims before it drinks their blood, it doesn’t look nearly so cuddly as, say, Paddington.

However, I find myself wondering, how deadly really is this beastie? To find out, let’s have a bit of a comparison, between the aforementioned Mongolian Death Worm and the most fearsome creature mainland Britain can offer up – the Greater Spotted Midlands Chav.

For reference:

WORM

CHAV

Strengths:

The worm could be considered impervious to attack, being both strong and fast. It has also been suggested that it can electrocute its victims to death as a nice change from burning them. However, what it gains in viciousness it loses in enthusiasm: not a single injury has been chalked up to the Death Worm for years, whereas go out in Coventry late at night with your mobile on display and you’re in line for a shoeing. What the chavs lack in sulphuric acid and supercapacitors, they make up for in belligerence, mindless aggression and sheer numbers.

Weaknesses:

There is no empirical evidence to suggest the presence of any chinks in the Death Worm’s armoury. Try and run it over and it will melt your tyres, and subsequently your face, with acid; try and spray it with bug spray and it is likely as not to take it off you and shove it where, even in the Gobi Desert, the sun is unlikely to shine. Both of these defences are effective against the Greater Spotted Midlands Chav – however, a far more apparent weakness lies in cheap, fluorescent alcoholic beverages. Whilst a steady flow of these will actually increase the danger for the reasons mentioned above, before long the attack will be nixed by means of the perpetrator passing out in a bus shelter.

Rarity:

This is the category where the Greater Spotted Midlands Chav takes a strong lead, being almost omnipresent in the provincial towns of the Midlands. Meanwhile, whilst the existence of the Mongolian Death Worm has never actually been disproven, nobody’s actually managed to take a photograph either*. Perhaps they were too busy being killed to death, or perhaps he’s shy. In any case, there’s between none and one of the blighters, meaning that the prize for terror in this category must go to the home team.

*Hence the somewhat terrifying but definitely blurry image above: I suppose it must be hard to do accurate brush-strokes when you're being electrified, dissolved and eaten all at the same time.

Likelihood to vandalise your Reliant Rialto:

This final category could be the clincher. As the Rialto has a fibreglass body, it is likely* to be quite resistant to the sulphuric acid which would quickly take the lustre off a metallic paintjob. For the same reason, the Worm’s electrocution attack will be blunted, and with a 2200mm wheelbase, the Reliant could be a smidgen long for the Worm to swallow whole. The chavs, meanwhile, will use their only major advantage over the worm – opposable thumbs – to bring every implement they can lay their hands on to bear against the defenceless Tamworth tricycle. This is especially worrying if, like us, you’re going to be transporting your Rialto to Coventry this weekend; and more worrying still if that Rialto has no side window and only a rudimentary ignition barrel.

*based on no knowledge whatsoever.

Conclusion:

Whilst the Mongolian Death Worm may be fearsome, it will be a breath of fresh air (laced with H₂SO₄) compared to the Greater Spotted Midlands Chav. Let’s just hope that we can fend off the menace of the latter before we head for the relative safety of the Gobi Desert in July!

Theft... and Daylight Robbery

“It’ll be fine.” Possibly the three most dangerous words in the English language. You use them when you’re busy ignoring everything that your intuition is screaming at you and, whilst nine times out of ten, ‘it’ really WILL be fine, that tenth time can often prove to be expensive.

Low on fuel and have to make a short motorway hop? “It’ll be fine…” Car tax expired two days ago and need to run the kids to school? “It’ll be fine…” You get the picture.

My “It’ll be fine” comeuppance was delivered on Christmas Day when I left the fascia attached to the rather nice Pioneer stereo in my newly acquired BMW E30. Realising that this left the car as a somewhat tempting target for vandals, I thought long and hard about venturing out into the cold to remove the fascia. Then I had another beer.

By Boxing Day morning, the car was gone.

They found it not twenty-four hours later, minus stereo, on a garage forecourt, with two lads trying industriously to steal more cars. Presumably, it had taken about that long to discover that a 1.8 8v, 189,000 miles and a heavy Touring bodyshell don’t make for the ideal getaway car… but I digress.

The car was recovered by Mansfield Group, a vehicle recovery sub-contractor tasked by the North Staffordshire police with securing any stolen or burned-out cars in the region. “Great!” I thought, when I was told the news, “I’ll simply pop in, collect my car, and see about repairing the damage.” Oh no I wouldn’t – not without paying the £150 recovery charge first. Oh, and the Scene of Crime Officer had to examine the car - he’d not be available until Monday - and there was a £12 per day “storage fee”.

Now, I appreciate that the recovery of vehicles is not a cheap operation. I further recognise that police budgets are stretched. But since when has policing been “pay-as-you-play”? And why, if we’re going down that route, doesn’t someone OTHER THAN THE VICTIM have to pay for it? “Well, it’s policy”, was the best response I could ascertain from North Staffs Police but it is a policy that seems utterly, utterly unfair.

It is also, arguably, unlawful. After all, they are providing a service which I could have procured by myself, either cheaply or (via the RAC) free. They have provided this service without my knowledge or agreement and then sent me the bill. Come on, at £150 for a tow of just under ten miles, I could probably have procured Elton John to drive the tow-truck.

Angry with the police, I set about claiming on my insurance, which was a TPFT policy with the people who wish to “Quote You Happy.” It transpired, though, that making a claim would double my resultant premiums and I’d also have to pay a £250 excess. This meant that a settlement figure on my car would have to be more than £850 for me not to make a loss, let alone get any money towards repairing my car. How likely was this, I asked? “We can’t say without sending an assessor, sir,” they responded. And you can’t have an assessor sent out without making a claim. My future finances thus depended on a gamble and, having tried my luck once this holiday and lost, big time, I was reluctant to take a second chance.

At this stage, I doubt they would be quoting me anywhere for fear of breaching OFCOM rules on offensive language.

My options, then, were threefold. Choice one: claim on the insurance, pay out £850, and hope the car was valued at more than £850, then spend the difference on the repairs (bearing in mind market value for my car was £750, and I’d paid just £550 for it). Choice two: pay for the repairs myself and stump up for the police fee myself too (which, by this time, had reached £210). Choice 3: Mansfield offered to waive the recovery charge if they were allowed to “dispose of” the vehicle themselves - after careful consideration, this turned out to be the simplest and least expensive option.

So a mint condition (well, it was before it was stolen) rare, very late BMW E30 is going to the crusher because of a combination of an unfair police policy and an even more unfair insurance policy. Of course, it is sour grapes to cry foul now, and I accept at least partial blame for leaving valuables on display. However, the feeling of helplessness, of having nowhere to turn, has been one of the least pleasant experiences of my life and one which I can’t help feeling that I don’t quite deserve.

So here’s a tip. Check your car security, check it again… and then check it a third time. Remove your SatNav holder before you leave the car and make sure you wipe off the tell-tale mark it leaves on the windscreen too. Buy a Crook-Lock. And for God’s sake make sure your No Claims Bonus is protected. In other words, do all the things you’ve always considered doing, but have dismissed as too much hassle. “It’ll be fine…” you’ll have thought.

It won’t be fine. It’ll be expensive.

Face to Face with William Riley of XPower

(Author's note: this piece was reprinted in part in CAR Magazine, 15/04/08)

"I've seen Bentley, and I've seen Aston Martin, and I know what they can do in terms of quality. We can do better."

This was the bullish message that William Riley, holder of the MG Xpower trademark and resuscitator of the MG SV project, gave out at the Pride of Longbridge rally today. The founder of MG Sport and Racing Europe limited said that he plans to expand his operation to produce between 1500-1800 cars per year, despite fierce competition from the likes of Aston Martin and Porsche.

Riley claimed that MG Xpower had already delivered seven customer cars, and that eighteen new shells had been produced by the company's subsidiary in Droitwich, West Midlands. He dismissed claims that the company was merely bolting together old MG-Rover cast-offs, stating that both the engine and bodyshell supply chains were strong. Despite this, the car at Pride of Longbridge (the same one which has been used in recent press photos) was on an 07 plate. "It's a demonstrator, and yes it is one of our own shells," retorts Riley.

It was obvious to an observer that the standard of fit and finish inside the cabin was not up to Aston Martin or Porsche standards. Exposed screwheads were visible, and various pieces of door trim were missing. "That is because this is the CS version, 150kg lighter than the standard car," claims Riley. He also claimed that by lowering the compression ratio and raising the supercharger boost, the MG Xpower SV WR CS (to give it its full name) produces nearly 600bhp, but no documentation was available to substantiate this claim.

To raise the car's almost unknown reputation, Riley plans to enter the CS into several hillclimb events, of which the first will be Shelsley Walsh in May. But the buying public will be more interested in how well the car functions on the road. If Riley is to sell even a fraction of the 1800 cars per year that he so boldly targets, he will need to convince a potential Aston Martin Vantage buyer that the SV WR is an attractive alternative. Put simply: if the standard of fit and finish is less than exemplary, the car is unlikely to sell, hence the brash claims about the competition.

Whether Riley can back up words with actions remains to be seen

LPG - Is It Really All That?

Christmas is done and dusted, then. You’ve drunk the sherry, recycled the packaging, made up with everyone you fell out with during the enforced period of bonhomie, and suffered the inevitable hangovers.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve also made some entirely fallacious New Year’s resolutions, all noted down meticulously in your new, hideously garish diary; bought in a last-minute panic by someone who doesn’t know you very well. The same as they did last year, in fact. And the year before that.

So come on then, hands up who can remember what resolutions they made last year? Anyone? How about 2006? I know I damn well can’t, for one simple reason: New Year is quite the worst time anyone could choose to make resolutions. Because, even if you were planning to get an Olympic-standard torso in the gym and a concours-winning classic in the garage, your good intentions will be blown to smithereens by the postal equivalent of an AIM-9X Sidewinder – January’s credit card bill.

Instantly, all thoughts of self-improvement evaporate in a fit of frugality. Let’s face it, we all get a bit drunk on the intoxicating liquour of shopping at Christmas, and in the credit card capital of Europe, the hangover comes later. Nobody eats turkey curry in February because they enjoy the taste – we eat it because we’re bloody skint!

Let’s just suppose, then, that I could offer you a way to halve your fuel bills. A way for the pump to read '60 litres - £30,' at every fill up. A way to smirk mercilessly at those whose 'exclusive' gold Visas spontaneously combust at even the mention of the word 'Shell'.

Well, I’m pleased to report that I can, and the solution comes in the form of three letters: LPG. In recent weeks, as you might have read on these pages, I have been running a 1989 Range Rover at an average of 12.8mpg, which, at £1.05 per litre, would have been crippling. But at just £30 for every 200 miles, its drink problem almost seemed manageable. In a car without a Frankenstein’s Monster of an engine (an old Sherpa 3.5 low-compression carbed V8 with a 3.9 EFI system bolted on top) one could achieve some ludicrously good pence-per-mile figures.

So you’re tempted, and you head down to your local filling station to check out this wondrously inexpensive fuel. And then you head to another filling station which isn’t local at all, because the nearest one to you has never heard of LPG and points you towards the Calorgas refill bottles. Well, mine did. By the time you’ve realised that they all call it different names – Autogas is the most common – you’re fed up and head home in a huff, resolving to stick with petrol until you have taken a crash-course in orienteering.

Just supposing you find a garage local to you which does stock Autogas, don’t expect the picture to be any more rosy, because the refill procedure makes the launch of the Space Shuttle look simple. Firstly, you have to screw an adaptor to the side of your car, which will cross-thread and get stuck. Then, you have to make a ludicrous bayonet-fitment click into place, and lock it in place with a third fitment. Then you press the button on the pump, and no gas comes out. You’re confused, so you unscrew the bayonet fitting to see what’s gone wrong, and PSHHHHHHT!! You get a face full of LPG. Did I mention it was refrigerated to 20 degrees below zero, and can cause severe burns?

Meanwhile, taking your hand off the button has deactivated the whole pump, and no amount of swearing will get it to work again. So, with a heavy heart and much apologising to the chap behind, you trudge inside and ask the assistant to reactivate the pump, who then asks you to pay for the £0.00 worth of gas you have so far managed to unleash. After you’ve argued the toss on this one, you head back outside and try again: bayonet, click, and AH, there’s a locking lever as well. So you pull that back, and cautiously hit the button, waiting for Hemel Hempstead to repeat itself.

But no, this time, miraculously, gas flows, just ten minutes after you first arrived! Do not, however, get complacent: remember that, once released, the trigger button will not re-activate. I developed a technique for a mid-fill up hand-swap, which I have called 'The LPG Shuffle': doubtless, you will develop your own.

The tank will let you know that it’s full (and presumably about to explode, turning you and the entire forecourt into that bit from Bullitt) by vibrating the hose violently and making the kind of noise that a duck would if you fed it into a food blender. At this point you must release the button, unclip the locking lever, turn the bayonet fitting, and get another face full of gas. Cold, exhausted, freeze-burned and smelling unpleasant, you join your place in the queue, questioning why the hell anyone would choose to save a few quid this way when they’ve got two perfectly good kidneys to sell first.

This is just what they want you to think.

You see, I believe wholeheartedly that the LPG filling system has been designed deliberately to put off all but the most committed of motorists. Nothing can have ended up this complicated and unpleasant by accident – it must have been engineered in. Whoever came up with the infernal thing obviously had a brief to make it as useless as a wind-powered submarine and as annoying as the Eurovision Song Contest. It is just a rumour, but apparently the Wembley Stadium contractors were involved somewhere in the process.

So who came up with the brief in the first place? Why, the government, of course. With excise at nearly 70p for every litre of petrol you put in your tank, why would they want everybody to switch to something from which they receive only 20p per litre? So they make the process as unpleasant as a trip to the dentists, in the surefire knowledge that the almighty faff involved will put off 95 per cent of potential money-savers. I know for sure that my mother, who drives 12k per year and could theoretically save £700 per annum on LPG, considers the cons to outweigh the massive financial pro.

Consider this: can it be a coincidence that the only three nations to use our ridiculous LPG filling system are Switzerland, the Netherlands and us – three of the most tax-hungry nations in Europe? I think not. They want your money, they want you to stay on petrol, and short of a revolution, there’s nothing we motorists can do about it. In other words, then, LPG is unlikely to prove the answer to your post-Christmas money woes, and I've wasted your time. Sorry and all that.

But look on the bright side – at least, now, it’s not your fault that you’ve failed live up to those resolutions for another year. As usual, you can lay the blame squarely at the door marked Number 10.

The Cold Car Caper

As you will all know, there are two types of car enthusiast: those who have experienced a Crap Car Caper, and those who have not. Myself and Tim Colley most definitely fall into the former category.

In May of this year, when Caper #1 occurred, when Scott Woodcock and I joined Tim in his coupe for a jaunt up to Nottingham to purchase a Rover 820 Tickford. The journey home was punctuated by some high-speed class-spotting and by the surprise of a Scooby driver at the guerrilla assault he received from said turbocharged convoy, which, to the untrained eye, might have looked like a couple of lethargic old knackers. Then in June, Tim returned the favour. Caper #2 involved two days, the Tickford, Keith Adams, several laybys, a knackered and misfiring Rover 820i and a lot of Red Bull, and resulted in my ownership of probably the worst car I have ever driven... until now.

Time passed, as is its wont. Both Tim and myself were desperate for Caper #3, so when Keith offered to loan me his Range Rover for a week to provide transport for my work experience placement, I jumped at the opportunity - and Tim kindly agreed to help out, on the agreement that I'd lend him an amp and a sub I had spare later in the day. So at 9am on a Saturday morning, after a refreshing 4 hour sleep, Tim picked me up from university, in (as has become customary) the Tomcat Turbo.

I should explain at this point that, after borrowing it for Caper #1, I am in love with this car. The first boosted kick-in-the-back was enough to cure my hangover, and despite the miserable weather we made swift progress down the road to Peterborough and the Practical Classics workshop.

Leaving a car unattended on a seedy industrial estate is brave. Leaving a car unattended and unlocked on an industrial estate is almost asking for trouble. Leaving the keys to said unattended, unlocked car in the boot could almost be said to be foolhardy. It is a measure of the sheer sheddiness of this Range Rover that it was still very much present and correct when we arrived to collect it. A G-reg Vogue SE, with all the toys and a leather interior, a stonking great V8, and an LPG conversion to boot? 'Ooh sir, suit you sir,' you might be thinking. Suit me, my behind.

I won't beat around the bush here - me and the Rangie didn't instantly hit it off. Much of this initial grumpiness was due to something Keith had warned me about - the lack of a heater. This forced me to wear so many layers of clothing I resembled the promotional tool of a well-known tyre company, but as this photo demonstrates, I still couldn't control my shivering...

I will transcribe, in full, the text of a voice-memo I recorded, half an hour into the journey home. For best effect, shout these remarks in a force-9 gale, to the accompaniment of a skipping Mark Ronson CD, in a voice somewhere between Harry Enfield's Kevin and Mariella Frostrup...

'Right, these are my thoughts on the Range Rover so far. It's probably about, ooh, five degrees outside, it's raining, verging on the sleet, and... I am sat in a car with no heater. I've got a hoodie on, I've got a jacket on, sadly I don't have any gloves. My hands are freezing. Erm... and because the windscreen keeps misting up from the rain, I'm having to drive along with the window wide open... hence why I'm being forced to SHOUT. We've been for a performance run - top whack was seventy miles per hour... nearly killed somebody in a Renault Clio when I was making a lot of noise and... erroneously assumed that I had overtaken them. I'm so cold.'

For despite a supposed 182bhp (this was later proved to be utter bollocks, but was my supposition at the time), this car's auto box was trying its hardest to ensure that not a single gee-gee got as far as the actual wheels. I did once see eighty, but just as I had been warned, the lack balancing on the front right-hand wheel made such reckless speeds undesirable. Meanwhile, Tim 'Smug bastard' Colley turned the heater up a notch in his coupe, but soon penance was to come in the form of a shower of LPG. Neither of us had ever experienced the fuel before, and while it is satisfying to see the meter read '30 litres - £14.00', it's a serious faff! A blog on the subject will be forthcoming soon.

The normal loveliness of the A429 provided the Rangie with a further opportunity to piss me off. Without the power to overtake, I was forced to sit back and try to catalogue the interesting selection of noises emanating from various distant corners of the beast. There was the whirring when I pressed the brake pedal, the tappety hiss of the engine, the occasional groan from God knows where, a clonk from the transmission and a harmonious clank from the right-hand CV joint. Next on my list of gripes came the hardness and lack of travel of the brake pedal, and the the dim-witted auto box which seemed grimly determined to prevent me from cresting hills altogether.

Parking it in my mother's street was a ten-minute affair owing to the sheer bulk of the thing, and the fact that the auto box had by this time gone into "sulk" mode, refusing stubbornly to engage reverse gear for minutes on end, then suddenly CLUNK! And you've hit number 38's Merc. Despairing, I went to play with Tim's coupe instead, and spent an evening defrosting.

So I've got 140 miles to do tomorrow to my jumping-off point for the work experience - then 60 miles per day for five days. A total of 550 miles including today's jaunt, this Caper is longer than most. Given the above, I should in all honesty be dreading it. And yet... I can't help but warm to the Coldest 4x4xFar. It's pushing me away, yet for some reason I'm coming back for more. Without a shadow of a doubt, it's the worst car I've ever driven (and I've driven some snotters in my few short years on the road), but I find myself with an irrational hankering to drive a good example of the breed.

Glutton for punishment? CHPD victim in the making? More importantly, is there a cure? I guess I'll find out over the coming week.

Cheers to Tim for Caper assistance, great company as ever, and a quick blast in the Turbo. Cheers (I think...) to Keith for the loan of the Rangie - hope I don't sound TOO ungrateful and spoiled. It's 3 degrees outside. I'm going for a drive. I might, as a better man than me once said, be some time.

Stereo-typo

While we’re all one big happy European family right now, it is untrue to say that some national stereotypes refuse to persist. According to an article in last week’s Times the French think that English women are fat, lazy, and fail to take care of their appearance. British men, meanwhile, are rubbish in bed and can’t cook, something which I’m sure would come as a surprise to Gordon Ramsey. Well, the second one would, anyway: I'm not sure what he's like in bed.

The British are as bad as anyone else, mind. Ask us to précis the various European nations and we’ll launch into a travelogue that would put Marco Polo to shame. The Germans are humourless and efficient, the French are rude and intransigent, and the Dutch all speak perfect English in between tokes on the bong. The Greeks are mental, the Italians are anarchists (and in the case of the women, raven-haired beauties who, however, become wizened old crones off the Dolmio advert some time around their thirtieth birthday) and the Belgians are boring. Whether or not he’s ever been to these places, an Englishman will be able to reel you off these definitions without so much as a moment’s hesitation. They’re accepted wisdom. They are facts.

Except, of course, they’re not facts at all. Having been on a hitchhiking mission to Paris last weekend, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a conciliatory French railway official, a Persian (not Iranian) communist in exile, and a Dutch bloke who spoke no English. A Belgian chap who gave us a lift across the channel, meanwhile, was the biggest playboy I have ever encountered – as a pilot and former tank driver, with his own boat on Lake Maggiore, he’s the definition of what a small boy wants to grow up to be. Ask him the definition of the word boring and he’d probably have to look it up in a dictionary. In short, he did not fit into my preconceived Belgian paradigm. Perhaps that’s why they say that travel broadens the mind.

How, though, to broaden the public’s mind with regard to cars? Because the automotive world suffers just as many preconceived judgments as the geographical one, and some of them are just daft. The one I’ve been struggling with the most this week has been the Renault Clio, which is, of course, perceived as the archetypal young person’s car. Ask me to count the number of cars on Warwick’s university campus that aren’t Clios, and I’d not be in any danger of taking my shoes and socks off. Nicole, it seems, has done her job well.

But I’ve been thrashing about in a 1997 1.4 model and I’ve been frankly appalled at almost every aspect of it. It IS a young person’s car, in that a child’s birthday party clearly had a major hand in the design process. The ride was modelled on a pogo-stick, the clutch was harder to depress than the birthday boy on a Ribena high, and the seats were as comfortable as his Little Tyke’s Cozy Coupe. The dash was laid out by blindfolded toddlers as part of a the afternoon’s entertainment, meaning the conjurer could slip outside for a cigarette – the car has no magic, no sparkle, none of the (sorry) joie de vivre I was expecting from a car pitched at the young, enthusiastic driver. It was slow, thrashy, the brakes didn’t work and it wasn’t even all that economical.

Compare this to the overlooked Rover 200, in both R8 and R3 form, which is of course perceived as the car of choice for fans of Werthers’ Originals. Those who carry a tartan rug on the passenger shelf. Those with a predilection for wearing pork-pie hats. Not to put too fine a point on it – old giffers. But why should this be? My old R8 was a tired old thing which set me back just £196, but it was superior in almost every way to the Renault. The dash was well laid out, its 1.4 K-series had the measure of its French cousin by forty horses (whilst sounding gorgeous through its K&N cone filter) and the cabin was light and airy. The boot was bigger, the driving position was superior, and despite a blowing exhaust and a rogered catalytic converter, I’d see over 40mpg on a run – all the things that are important to a young driver on a tight budget. What’s more, there was an air of class, of faded grandeur, like the country house of a family who have fallen on hard times. For first-time buyers, the Rover was a tatty Cotswold cottage to the Renault’s Barratt starter-home.

Sadly, though, the stereotype is self-perpetuating. Whilst the MG Z-cars went a long way to rehabilitating that brand’s image, it would be untrue to say that this halo-effect extended to their Rover siblings, and thusly to the rest of the brand. Old people drive Rovers, therefore more old people buy Rovers, and young people are put off by this. The few enlightened individuals that I know who admit to owning R8s face a similar level of incredulity to if they announced they’d discovered a cracking German stand-up comedian or an Italian business with a correctly filed tax report.

So we are back where we started – the Clio is a young person’s car, and the 200 is for pensioners. In that case, to quote that nice young man Robert Williams, 'I hope I’m old before I die.'

Gaydon: Twinned With The Louvre

(Author's Note: This article was written after confirmation that the National Motor Museum at Gaydon had been leaving priceless exhibits outside, unprotected from the elements, because of lack of space)

Outrage at Mistreatment of Louvre Exhibits.

There was mounting anger on the streets of Paris last night, as a small but vocal crowd gathered to protest the mistreatment of many valuable artworks by the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Protesters said that some priceless, irreplaceable works, such as David’s Oath of the Horatii and Alexandros’ Venus de Milo, had been left in totally unsuitable conditions for their preservation. Photographic evidence, meanwhile, suggested that paintings and sculptures were being stored outside the museum’s walls, in an insecure location by the site’s waste disposal facilities.

In a recent press statement, the museum’s press director, J Merde, gave assurances that the exhibits were being stored outside only temporarily, and that the situation would soon be rectified.

“This process has been more prolonged than we anticipated as planning permission has had to be sought from the local authority. As a result we have had to keep some paintings outside, a situation we are clearly less than happy with…We have been able to move a significant number of the most fragile paintings… into covered storage and we hope to complete the process for all the collection with 4-5 weeks. At the same time we have also taken the opportunity to inspect paintings and sculptures in our workshop. We certainly have no intention of keeping any works outside during the winter period and have no plans to sell any works from the reserve collection.”

However, protesters point to the recent grant given to the Musée by the Lotto, which has been spent on an interior remodelling rather than the preservation of existing works. It is strongly felt that the money has, at least in part, been mis-spent. Merde insists that “We have taken the opportunity to spruce up the rest of the museum,” and that “Whilst it may feel more empty, this is in response to an often-raised comment by visitors that they would like more space around the exhibits, to view them more easily.” Many protesters, however, see this as an indication that the displaced works will not be returned to public viewing, and instead will be allowed to languish in inappropriate conditions for the foreseeable future.

The French Secretary of Culture, Jamie Lesoignons, was unavailable for comment.

Then, with a jolt, Russ woke up in his bed, reaching immediately for two aspirin. His head was spinning, and he was appalled by what he had dreamed. No museum would be allowed to carry on like that, would it? Would it?