Everything Mixed Together

Back in 1995 I bought Natalie Merchant's first solo album Tigerlily. Since then it has done extended duty in my car CD player and now has a new life in iTunes on my laptop.

Not many albums sound as good to me today as when I first bought them, which makes it all the more strange that I've never so much as looked for any of her newer work. A situation that I shall remedy right now.

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), which are accurate for me so far
• 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...

If it should come to pass that you find yourself enjoying half a bottle of cab-sauv over dinner to the point that your eyes seem to be pointing in entirely different directions, and if you should then feel inclined to toss half a dozen of your razor sharp kitchen knives into the sink ready to do the dishes, and if you enjoy playing the piano unencumbered by Band-Aids, you should probably stop before plunging your hands into the hot water...

Sometimes I make this recipe with the intention of taking it to a barbecue or potluck dinner. Then I taste it to make sure that it is OK, time passes, and I find that there's none left. It's that good.

Blend a crushed garlic clove with a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of mustard powder, a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and then blend that into a cup or so of mixed cream cheese and mayonnaise. Mix in a handful of grated blue cheese.

I made it tonight, and tomorrow there is a picnic. There might be some left...

Birthdays are of course one of the many great excuses for acquiring new gadgets. This year I grabbed an Elgato DTT Stick accompanied by the EyeTV 2.0 Personal Video Recorder software.

I thought it would be quite good, but it's really very good. So comprehensively excellent that my (admittedly crap) cathode-ray-tube beast of a television now lies abandoned in the back room.

The main reason my viewing habits have been transformed is the PVR. Fancy a cup of tea on commercial free ABC TV? Just pause the programme, then start it up again once the beverage is steaming gently on the desk beside me. Missed that hilarious quip on the West Wing because the dog was barking? Rewind a few seconds and hear it all over again.

Another big plus is the electronic programme guide. To record a show I look at a list of the next week's programming and click on those I want to record. After they've been recorded they show up in a list labelled with the programme names.

Compare this to the old days when I would spend ten minutes hunting for the VCR remote and then labour through the programming menu (half the time forgetting to press the crucial "Timer" button and missing the show entirely). When I wanted to watch a show I had to remove the Transformers tape from the VCR, hunt through the heap of anonymous cassettes under the TV, and then discover that someone had recorded an episode of Bob The Builder over the last five minutes of the show.

The third bonus is that EyeTV runs on my Mac laptop, which sits next to my desktop PC when I'm at home. Now, when something interesting comes up on a TV show I can nip into Wikipedia to find out more about it without having to leave my chair. I'm being entertained and educated...

Did I mention that I've got a bit of a thing about cars? Nothing gets me going like the curve of a well crafted wheel arch.

And there were plenty of those on display at the Perth Car Show last weekend. Not one of the world's best known automotive concours d'excellence, but more than engaging enough to occupy the male members of my family for an astonishing six hours.

The main reason for going is so that I can bang on interminably about all and sundry. "Of course, the sweep of the C-pillar pays homage to the coupe of 1965". "Did you notice that they've made a subtle change to the design of the rear indicator lenses?". Every button on the dashboard needs to be pressed, the seat folding mechanisms in the 4x4s need a good workout, the flip 'n' spin cup holders need to be flipped 'n' spun.

This year's highlights included the gargantuan Mercedes CL coupe (always rewarding to leave finger marks on a car that's worth more than my house), the Mitsubishi Concept Sportback - no doubt the next Lancer will be just like it, but with all the interesting bits removed - and the fabulous rear-end of the Alfa Romeo Brera.

None of which are likely to be my next car. I spent the whole time gazing at something gorgeous and thinking "If only they would do it as a station wagon"...

The 80GB hard drive that seemed inordinately capacious back in the old days of photos is no match for the world of video. One dose of evening news and an episode of Parkinson and 10GB was snaffled up in a moment.

I'm not very tidy with my disk space. I don't clean up my messes, I duplicate a bunch o'stuff and keep both copies, I download things and never get rid of them (even if they're crap). But now I had 5GB of Stargate to save and nowhere to put it. A disk spring-clean was in order.

A dip into iTunes found a selection of tracks I was unlikely to ever listen to. Trombone concertos, the free-to-download experimental vocal gymnast, all the stuff without discernible melody or rhythmn - 6GB cleaned up there. All the burn folders and ancient backups - 4GB. The fifteen copies of the bug database left over from 2005 - 2GB. Half an hour later there was nearly 20GB of fresh 'n' tidy new empty disk space.

It's soul cleansing - like loosing a whole lot of weight. Without giving up meat pies...