News

Perth is a bit warm at the moment.

For weeks the daily temperature has been above 35 and the house heated up. Now everything inside the house has started to heat up.

Red wine is ideally served at room temperature but that means 19th century French room temperature, which is about 18 degrees, not 28. I've taken to keeping it in the fridge because when you pour wine at 5 degrees into a glass that's 28 degrees it comes out about right.

Warm Nutrigrain floating in cold milk is odd.

And donning hot socks in the morning is not to be recommended.

NAB Connect is the name of the online banking system for the company accounts. It isn't a great web application and I had to fight with as usual today. After logging out today I was asked if I wanted to complete an online satisfaction survey. Seeing the opportunity to vent I carefully filled in all of the sections and provided constructive comments.

On clicking the Submit button I got a stack of errors - the survey doesn't work on a Macintosh.

Not satisfied.

Oh, a whole year without posting. That sucks.

As days-of-the-week-on-which-to-turn-40 go Wednesday is perhaps the least desirable. Insufficiently close to the beginning or end of of the week to turn it into a long weekend, and I'm not quite narcissistic enough to take the whole week off. Instead I thought a pleasant mid-week day off would suffice and, happily, it did.

I had some plans, some of which changed slightly on the day. The extended cycle ride along the river front was replaced by an stroll along the river front abbreviated by Eggs Benedict and coffee at Deep Water Point. Pretentiously reading Breakfast At Tiffany's in Kings Park ran into problems when I forgot to bring the book, but a hastily purchased copy of The Great Gatsby was a suitable alternative. The trip to Ikea was unavoidable but the fates smiled on me and I manged to get in and out without feeling the slightest bit homicidal. Chocolate from Subiaco, wine from Applecross, pre-prepared dinner from Mount Pleasant all went according to plan and I was back in time to get Ben from school.

I mentioned to mum that the day had been very relaxing. She replied that it was in stark contrast to the day she had 40 years ago.

Normally at Christmas time this is what happens. We write all of the Christmas cards, promising that we will write a letter to go in each one. Time runs out and we end up sticking the cards in the post at the last possible moment, without the letters.

This year we did it differently. We wrote the letter, then time ran out before we had written the Christmas cards and we ended up not sending anything at all. Disaster.

So to all of you of were kind enough to send us cards this year we're sorry for the un-festive silence. Next Christmas we'll be back to our usual routine.

So 2008 wasn't a great year for blog entries, but it was bursting with action in other regards. Here's a quick run-down

• HarvestRoad, for whom I have been working since 2002, sold its business and a dozen of its employees to an Italian publishing house.
• My job changed a lot.
• We moved office.
• We moved office again.
• Things got back to normal.

It was a mental work year, mostly as a result of all the things that happen when a company creates a new subsidiary. Happily we kept producing software throughout the changes and are just testing the first major release since 2006.

Somewhere along the way Ben grew another six inches, Jasper contracted (and is now in remission from) a type of cancer to which retrievers are susceptible, Eve kept everything running smoothly and I got my first (and second) iPod.

Helped along by a birthday present bike I started to exercise, first only on a weekly basis and now several times a week. Right now I am about a kilo heavier than I was this time last year...

The good thing about having bought a car is that I can go back to reading car magazines just because I enjoy them, and not because I need to choose a car for myself.

I'm now free to appreciate the curve of a wheel arch or the knurling on an indicator stalk with complete disregard for the practicalities of actually owning one.

And that means that I can stop looking at station wagons for another four years...

A concentrated period of internet searching revealed that there was only a single car in the whole of Perth that matched all of my criteria, those being:

• Seven seats, to accommodate kids, grandparents
• Room for the dog, bikes, camping gear
• Reasonably throaty engine so that it can still move when loaded with the above
• Five or more gears, as a laughable nod in the direction of fuel economy
• Cruise control, so I don't have too much to think about on the freeway

Happily, Eve was OK with the price and Range Ford were happy to take the Magna as a trade-in, so we bought it, and here it is:

Compared to the stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb bright green Magna this is an ultra-conservative all-over silver. I actually have to remember where I park it because it certainly doesn't stick out in a crowd. There are a few things that make up for the anonymity though. Electric windows for a start. In know that they aren't exactly a revolutionary idea but for years I've been winding my own, and having a little motor doing it for you is quite a treat. The split rear tailgate is handy because, as anyone with a station wagon will know, you inevitably find yourself parked too close to the thing behind you and can't open the back without first driving forward.

It's also got a trick ZF 6-speed gear box which has found a home in several cars much further up-market than the Ford. Its electronic brain notices when you are going up-hill and helps by not up-shifting, down-shifts if you brake when going down-hill, and will delay changing up until you have straightened out of a bend. There's a performance mode that actually makes a noticeable difference and you can change the gears yourself should the urge grab you. My only criticism of this fantastic device is the disappointing feel of the shifter when you move it. In a Jaguar I'm sure that it must go snick-snick-snick but in the Ford it goes flub-flub-flub. A small strip of metal in there would have made all the difference.

It feels big, but although it is taller than the Magna it isn't actually any longer. It makes plenty more leg room in the second row by moving the front seats forward and having a shorter bonnet - something I noticed when I first put it in the garage and stopped well short of the wall. Using my foolproof line-the-windscreen-up-with-a-brick method I have to drive a whole brick further in with the Territory than I did with the Magna.

Quick facts:

• 190kW (255bhp) 383Nm (282lb/ft) 4.0l DOHC 24V straight six
• 12.8l/100km fuel consumption official figures (22mpg), although I'm getting closer to 12.1
• Weight 2.1 tonnes
• Length 4.8m, width 1.9m, height 1.7m

There's no denying that's a lot of metal to move, and there is plenty inertia to overcome when sudden acceleration is called for. It's not hard to get it moving but there is a moment just after pressing the pedal when the warp engines spin up to full power - and then you surge forward crushing the smaller cars beneath those enormous wheels...

Actually there is a third choice - a 2005 Misubishi Magna!

On the plus side you get quite a lot for your money thanks to price-slashing on the 380 model that replaced it, but on the downside it wouldn't offer much novelty.

My trusty Mitsubishi Magna is getting a bit long in the tooth and is starting to make noises that suggest imminent and expensive repair bills. By happy coincidence there's some money in the bank and so I am looking for a replacement.

Ideally that would be a large station wagon with a three litre diesel engine, an automatic gearbox and a good selection of safety systems. Unfortunately the only cars that meet those criteria in Australia are the BMW 5-series and the E-class Mercedes, both of which cost about four times what I can afford. I'm also not sure that I'd be entirely comfortable lobbing my slobbering dog or half a hundredweight of timber in the back of a car costing $120k and upholstered in leather and luxurious wool carpets.

Excluding the insanely expensive European offerings what's left? From Holden there's the Commodore, but it's the last hurrah of the VT version that sprang off the drawing board in the mid nineties, and is hardly state of the art. Ford's Falcon wagon is aimed squarely at photocopier repair technicians (semi-elliptical leaf springs, for God's sake) and is only drivable if loaded to the gunnels. The Japanese manufacturers have completely abandoned the large wagon - the demise of the Magna in 2005 meant that not one of them makes anything bigger than a compact.

So what's left? Only two choices I'm afraid: an SUV or a people mover. And those options present a few problems...