14/01/2008 Weekend spannering and antics

I haven't wielded a spanner in anger since a few weeks before Christmas. This weekend I decided to hit the garage harder than ever before to make up for some lost time. I'm going to be losing my flat and garage in a few months so I need both cars running, spares reduced to a minimum and a slim down on tools.

Saturday morning I bolted the alternator back on the Pop and fired it up after standing for nearly a month now. Started up after a little cranking and ran as normal and the alternator appeared to be working, so we loaded it up with the dead spare engine, a gearbox, a couple of clutches, starter motor, dead dynamo, some old cardboard boxes, some scrap metal and a load of old tins of paint. Ideally this should have gone to the scrap man because I probably could have got a few quid for the metal but time was slim so it was down the tip with it. My mate chucked the gearbox from above his head straight through the front of a nice glass fronted microwave oven and then the two of us threw the engine on top of a lawnmower that made a satisfying crunch. Then the other bits were all aimed at some empty metal drums and we generally made a nuisance of ourselves between people trying to tell us nice old car etc. Bizarrely old paint just goes in 'general waste' despite being 2K and in my opinion it's a bit toxic to be just throwing about so we put that upright and in view in case anyone thought otherwise.

Then it was shoot back to have a look at the brakes on my mate's 2003 S Type Jag. It's got aftermarket brakes which have some badly designed clips on the pads that turn in and rub on the disc. This makes them squeal and they just start to wear away, so you'd eventually have no retaining clip and the pad would end up rattling around. So we modified them and problem solved, but not before I managed to stab myself in the eyebrow with my needle nose pliers pulling them off with all my strength. Hey they're a big target on my face, don't ask.

Next it was head over to another mate with starting problems with his MG Midget. It was last run in 1998 but was all rebuilt etc ready to go. So he got sparks and it turns over but no fuel coming up and he can't suck it up the pipe. I took the pump off and the two valves were stuck shut so a prod and suck later and it was working again, back on and pumping like a pornstar. Now we just couldn't get any fuel to go through the carbs so I reckon the jets must be blocked up. I squirted some fuel down the pots and it fired so I then aimed the fuel line in one carb and it ran but revved right up to the top where the throttle cable had hooked itself up and yanked the throttle wide open. Opps. It also sprayed me down with petrol in a gush not unlike one of those squirting porn sites even with my thumb over the end as hard as I could. Look it up if you haven't seen it, kinda strange. So that was mate number 2 happy too.

Sunday I'd promised a local RR member I'd show him the basics of welding so loaded the Pop up with my MIG welder, grinder and some tools and popped round the corner. Had an eyeball at his '69 Mini which looked to be in pretty good shape despite him thinking it was knackered. It's been quite heavily restored at some point but it all looked like it had been done to a high standard. The front footwells had been stick welded in and I think that was what was putting him off because the welds are very proud and thick compared to MIG but they looked fine to me. I just recommended he stripped the paint back so he could have a better look at them. So out with some scrap metal and the pointy zappy sparky sticky metal together machine and we got on with a bit of practice welding and I showed him how to do some basic repairs by welding a small crack which had propogated in one of my front wings. Not from driving the car so hard it twists honest officer. He did quite well with it so I think when his Snap On machine turns up he's going to have fun there.

So I'm satisfied mechanically which means I don't need to get angry and beat the missus or any of that stuff that happens when you're frustrated because you can't get out to the garage.

09/07/2007 The work toilets part deux

I've commented before about the toilets at work and how much I dislike them. I have even tried to rearrange my priorities so that I don't have to use them but unfortunately my daily grumblings appear to be dictated more by the time of day than what I eat and when I eat it. I would be the ideal person to have when lost at sea as my timing is accurate to within minutes most days. Navigating on a ship would be a doddle.

This leaves me with a regular time slot each day in my choice of cubicle. Stalls 2 and 3 have the least bogies wiped on the wall so I tend to choose one of those two. I avoid the toilet if the lid is down because this usually means there is a surprise lurking underneath. What makes people think that if they leave a baby's arm that won't flush away that putting the lid down makes it magically go away?

During my regular period I'm guessing that other people experience their own regular 24 hour bowel movement. I have been able to verify this with a few simple observations. The easiest is we tend to wear the same shoes nearly every day and because there is a gap under the bottom of the cubicle wall I often spot the same shoe on view to my left while I am busy popping a vein. This is easily foiled by someone wearing a different pair so it's not entirely accurate by itself but I can couple it with other observations such as a shuffling walk or a distinctive cough. Thus I have anonymous toilet users that are actually identifiable without me having to know who they actually are. I remember I first did this when I started my career. The same person would come in and use the cubicle next door practically every day of the week.

I'm obsessed with what comes out of my chute. It's a wonderful window into how you are functioning as an individual. It tells you if you're getting enough fibre, eating too much fat, what you had last night was disagreeable and in extreme cases of chilli or sweetcorn, what you ate as well. Fascinating. So imagine my glee when I get to analyse another individual and their efforts are particularly, how do we put this, characteristic?

This guy that used to come in during my first job. It was shiny black brogues, can't remember what colour socks but every day would be the same noises. It was a blast of air followed by some splattering, sounds of a hot viscous airated liquid being forced under pressure through an aperture and, frankly, signs of distress. I'm not joking when I say it was every day, this guy literally had to go through this trauma every day of the week. I wouldn't even want to speculate what he must have been eating but I think that sort of daily punishment would age me prematurely.

So that's the past, today I have different colleagues and the happenings behind the cubicle wall are very different too. We have a bloke with a noisy nose. This is definitely not the person who wipes the bogies on the wall because it's simply not possible to have nostrils that sound like they have a pair of biro lids shoved up them if the contents have been picked out and wiped on the inside of the cubicle. This person also either shuffles about a lot or they wear noisy clothes. Experimenting for myself I have come to the conclusion that it is the former and excessive shuffling and nose use while trying to lay a cable can mean only one thing: excess effort. Then there is the guy who sounds like a garden hose. I can only conclude he has a comedy oversize urethra because I haven't heard water transferred from one vessel to another like that since I emptied a water bowser with a 2" diameter pipe. I am humbled by his bladder capacity, it is most impressive.

The last person I wish to comment on here is the excessive toilet roll user. I only notice this person at the end of their session when the toilet roll dispenser starts to complain. Literally miles are reeled off, balled up and then the rubbing begins. Rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, pause, reel, reel, reel, reel, reel, reel, pause, repeat. What kind of mess must this be making? I could never do this to myself!!!!! I don't even want to think about it.

Still, I guess there are mookie munchers out there so what would I know...

03/05/2007 75 years old and 75 miles in...

This is my first week of driving an ancient car every day and I thought I'd share the experience. It's not quite 75 years old but I have done 75 trouble free miles this week. For anyone who doesn't know it's a 1954 Ford Pop, basically designed some time during WW2 and it's got beam axles front and rear, cross-springs and cable brakes. The engine is a 30hp flathead-4 going through a 3 speed gearbox with very basic syncromesh which may as well not be there. Lever arm shocks all round and tall 450-17 crossplies which measure out at 125/95/17 in today's size. Originally it was 6-volts with a dynamo on positive earth but I've converted it over to a 12V alternator on neggy earth to make starting etc a bit easier.

This is what it looks like, I don't have any more recent photos but it looks the same except for shiner wheels, some indicators and the new number on the front. Oh and an MOT:

My drive to work is through Biggin Hill and Westerham down towards Sundridge which is mainly twisty lanes and average speed is about 40-45 mph up to about 55mph tops in a modern daily. I've been pleased to say that I can keep up with no problems. The top speed of my car is 61 but I normally wouldn't get up there so there is no need for me to have a faster car. There is a horrible hill up from Westerham to Biggin Hill and that is the only place the car stuggles. Speed drops down to about 25mph and speed is limited by the huge jump between 2nd and 3rd gear. In 2nd the engine is screaming in agony but 3rd is just too far away and tha change takes too long. I think we've all been there when another gear would have come in handy.

Round the bends the body roll is quite astonishing and cars on the other side of the road literally move right over their side when they see me coming round a bend. Having said that it sticks to the road quite well considering the tyres are so skinny and I haven't managed to squeal them yet. The steering itself is heavy and vague and I'd forgotten what it was like with a steering box. Coupled with the fact that it's cross-steering, there's a bit of play in the kingpins, then mid-bend the tall tyres catch up with the car it tends to wander about a bit but it's great fun and once I've put the new kingpins on it should sharpen things up.

The brakes. Everyone should drive a car with cable brakes at least once in their life - it's character building. I'm not going to beat around the bush here they are frankly rubbish. No, they are non-existant. Let me describe what happens when you press the brake pedal: Initially nothing happens because there is no power assist and it's drums all round so you press a bit harder. Then the legwork makes its way through a series of linkages that equalise front to back, left to right on both axles and then equalise between the two shoes in each drum. It is a truly ingenious system designed by rollup smoking greyhaired engineers in white coats and I've spent ages under the car pulling cables watching the system work. Finally the car starts to slow but the experience isn't over yet. Unfortunately the cables work best when the wheels are straight and the kingpins are in perfect condition. In reality what happens is the cables pull the kingpin over a bit because it's worn and the car steers a little. One compensates but then you pull the cable a bit when you steer the wheels so it heads the other way and you snake to a halt. In an emergency it's all a bit more intense and exaggerated and involves a gear change to knock off a few extra mph. You wouldn't want to rely on them.

The engine is very basic and has no water pump and no oil filter. It's not like a modern engine because the valves are actually in the block next to the bores, looks a bit like this from above valves on one side, bores next to them...

:O
:O
:O
:O

...and the combustion chamber, an oval shape, covers both the valves and the bore in a solid metal head. With no water pump the engine cools itself with an enormous tall radiator. The water boils in the block and syphons up to the top of the radiator where it is cooled by the big fan on the front of the alternator pulley. By today's standards the engine runs extremely hot and it needs topping up with water regularly as it boils it off. Naturally it leaks a lot of oil as well but hey, it stops the car rusting!!! Fuel consumption seems to be pretty good but I haven't worked out mpg yet as I haven't got through enough fuel.

Interior comfort is by way of 3/4 of a tatty interior. Smells like it looks but it's dead comfy and the seats offer negative support and spill you out during a bend. There's no radio but the heater works well. So I hope that gives you all some insight into what it's like in the world of a truly shonky car owner!

07/05/2007 Strong economy? I think I might disagree.

We're led to believe that the economy is very strong in this country and on a grand scale it probably is. I'm having increasing concerns on the state of the economy on a smaller, local, more personal level.

About 10 years ago I was having a grown up chat with my dad, I hadn’t yet moved out fully and was partway through university. We were talking finances, I knew he struggled to support the family in the earlier days but by now we were quite well off in a large 5 bedroom house, 2 cars and dad’s toy in the garage. He estimated that the whole household cost about £35K per year to run which covered everything; mortgage, doing up the house, pets, food, petrol, holidays, going out, the lot. It was a good discussion and I remember it well because it gave me probably the best understanding of what life costs. Unfortunately, coupled with some basic A level maths, it has also given me an insight into how screwed up things might be in this country economically.

Around that time I was a sponsored student at Marconi. Their graduate wage was just under £17K which was considered a little under average but it was still a lot of money to bring in when retail jobs were considerably less. I worked there for a year and during holiday times and they were quite clever the way they paid us as students. Our term-time meant that when we worked a whole year we were paid exactly across two financial years, so we were paid exactly the same amount as our tax code across 6 months and thus paid no income tax. That was plenty to rent a studio flat at £35 per week and run a car.

I’m going to apply my maths bit now and get it out the way because it’s important but complicated. It’s how much something increases in price due to inflation. Inflation on average is about 5% in this country, it goes up and down but across any period of time it is 5%. That means £1 next year is £1.05, £1.1025 the next year, £1.158 the next and so on. Across a 10 year period the price of goods should have risen by a factor of approximately 1.6 (or a 60% increase) and theoretically wages should to too so that we don’t start finding everything very expensive. But have they?

Lets have a quick look at those engineering wages. Non-experienced engineers appear to be able to command a £20K starting salary fresh out of university which I make an 18% increase. According to statistics.gov.uk our wages overall were rising at about 3% in 1998 and cycling every 2 years between 3% and 4.5%. Women’s wages have gone up more than men’s but it is still below that 5% inflation. Does that mean we’re getting poorer? Not necessarily because over that period inflation has actually been quite low but we ought to factor in the housing boom as this is what appears to have screwed everything up. 5 years ago a new one bedroom flat in SE London would have set you back about £80K and the prices were rising rapidly. The same flat will now cost you closer to £190K, a whopping 137% increase.

5 years ago Person A is in a position to buy his first place. He earns £25K per year which sees about £1500 in the bank each month. He comfortably bought his own flat with the mortgage repayments coming in at about £530/month so there’s plenty left over for the rest of life like food, saving for a new car, kids in the future, pension etc. Say person B walks in today and buys the flat next door, he does exactly the same job and wages are roughly the same but to live in the same flat as the guy next door he has to find £1250 per month, way over double the mortgage for person A. Suddenly there’s nothing left to put aside for tomorrow, he can’t afford a car when there’s that much going out, he only breaks even every month, can’t afford a pension and kids? Well forget about it, no chance, there is no way he would be able to afford it.

So we have two equal guys doing the same job earning roughly the same amount but one can afford to live comfortably, go on holiday, put plenty away for later and buy a new car every few years while the other has to struggle to get by. You could argue that you need to factor in a second wage today but then you have two people struggling for the same reasons. The couple in no.32 earn the same amount as the couple in no.33 except one is loaded and the other can just about afford to live there.

So what can we do about that? Earn more, that appears to be the way forward but our economy isn’t as straightforward as that. When one earns more one gets taxed more so to actually land noticeably more in the bank one has to earn considerably more. Then to cover that doubled mortgage repayment one would have to be earning nearly double what the guy next door does to be able to lead the same lifestyle.

Say I wanted to live in the same house as my parents did when I was a kid. My dad earned £30K and the house cost £125K in the late 80’s. Mortgage would have set him back about £650 per month which was a lot then but he was earning enough to cover that. When the house was sold a couple of years ago it went for £455K, below market rate but still netting them £300K for just living there. Today the house next door is on the market at £520K and I am roughly the same age now as he was when he bought it. If I were to buy that house today I would have to be able to find nearly £4000 per month to pay the mortgage, they say that you should only spend about 1/3 of your income on rent or mortgage so I would have to be earning over 120K to be able to afford that. It’s clear then that young people will never live the same lifestyle as their parents did and it is only set to get worse.

Is that the sign of a strong economy? I’m not convinced. But next time the young guy in the office says he has no money at the end of the month just bear that in mind, as he probably didn’t pour it all down his throat in the pub.

07/04/2007 Does food shopping stress you out?

I'm starting to really avoid food shopping, I literally hate going to the supermarket.

First off it's not very far away so I walk there but I have to cross my road at a point where people are either nailing it off the roundabout onto my road or slowing down from usually way over the 30 limit. So they nose dive the car and look all braced up inside because they are braking way harder than they would have to if they were sticking somewhere near the speed limit. Men regularly don't stop and glare at you standing at crossing, women always stop. ALWAYS, even if it means an emergency maneouver. Sometimes a child might fly into the front of the car from the back.

The entrance parade to the supermarket is an open area with a couple of benches and it's either occupied by some down and outs drinking Tennents Super T (although they don't ever bother me) or it's a hoard of kids. Generally they are being unsavoury, spitting everywhere, making lots of noise and making it hard to get a clear walk through. Sometimes vandalising the place and I've called the police once.

Outside the entrance itself is street spam. The same middle-eastern guy selling the Big Issue who has been selling it there for the last 2 years or so, only now he's not the spotty teenager he was when he first turned up. This irritates me. Get a damn job or learn that I see you probably 2-3 times a week. Every time I walk past you say softly "Beeg Issuuuuue" and in 2 years I've never wanted to buy your magazine. That's potentially up to 300 times you've seen me, you must recognise me by now.

The shop is literally packed with people who have never seen a supermarket before, or at least have never been to this one. They don't know where anything is zigzagging from one thing back to another. Oh and they're blind too, they can't see me because they just push their trolley without looking what they are about to push it into: me. I can only assume they drive like that too so I'm glad I walk to the supermarket. The screaming kids. And how can little old dears take up so much space? Is it their right to push me out the way to get to their carrots?

On the subject of olds why is Friday in the Supermarket like walking into a geriatric ward in the hospital? These people have *all week* to do their shopping but they still choose to do it all on a Friday or Saturday morning. Then there are the screaming kids, don't get me started on the screaming kids.

So that's it, I've fought to get my items in my basket and I've made my way to a queue. The other queues naturally move faster than mine but that's not what's bothering me at this point. Why does the person behind me have to stand so close? This is my space and you are invading it. Their shopping bashes my legs or they shove their basket forwards and it touches the backs of my feet. Does it not register to these people that other people are there? Had the other queues not been going down quicker than mine I might have considered allowing them to go first and I'll run through the uncomfortably close procedure myself.

The belt on the packing end of the till powers all my shopping down to the end and forces the heavier shopping to crush my veg. The plastic packaging audibly warns the operator that it is in trouble but its screams of pain are ignored. I have loaded it on the other end so that it is comparted into veg, meat, dairy and finally bread but the operator manages to mix it all up thus foiling my plan of simple efficient packing as it comes through and my shopping ends up crushed.

But finally I'm free, back through the kids, take my life in my own hands crossing the road and I arrive home stressed, posting about it on the internet. Does shopping stress anyone else out?

31/03/2007 Good wine bad wine

Yesterday I took advantage of the 40% off offer at Threshers. Now before a load of you jump in with the old "it's cheaper at Tesco" I did check my prices and my conclusions are as follows: Yes the cheaper bottles are cheaper in the supermarkets but as soon as you get to the £6.50 range and above they are the same price. What I did notice is that there is much more selection at this price range and there are no cheapo bottles marked up artificially high so they look like a bargain when they go on "offer" at £4 in the supermarket. Threshers also have a rolling 3 fr 2 deal so if you find a bottle you like in the £6.50 range you will find you can get a couple of nice bottles for the same price as the rough plonk that the supermarkets sell.

So here's what I got: 1 bottle of £6.50 Zinfandel to go with pizza or burgers, a £9 Shiraz with a gold medal from Decanter magazine (generally it has to be pretty good to even be sniffed at by them so I'm looking forward to that), a £15 bottle of Chatauneuf du Pape which I have had before and enjoyed and their house Pinot Noir at £12. Total for all 4 bottles came to £26 for reds that I would normally consider a bit out my price range so Jonny69 is a happy chappy :)

First thing I noticed about these wines vs the ones in the supermarkets: The alcohol content. These 4 are all 14-14.5% while the supermarket bottles are currently hovering around the 12% mark. I don't know a huge amount about the wine making process but at a guess I'd say that lower alcohol means the wine doesn't need as long or as much care so they can spit it out in no time at a lower price. The alcohol really adds something to the taste of the wine in my opinion and at 12% a red can taste quite watery if it doesn't have the flavour to back it up.

Last night I popped the Zinfandel to go with some takeaway pizzas from Zizi. I recommend trying takeway pizzas from Zizi or Ask. Both the same company I think but they do really good pizza and they are £5 each when you pick them up. Zinfandel is a big fat American wine, it's sweet, spicy, slightly oaky sometimes, strong in alcohol and strong in taste. Typical sort of American fare. It goes really well with salty food, red meat and cooked tomatoes like pasta sauce, pizza, burgers, bbq ribs and chips.

I've been getting tired of supermarket wine for some time as I feel the quality has been falling and for the first time in a very long time I really enjoyed the bottle last night. It went really well with my pizza that featured anchovies, capers and black olives and I drank half the bottle. I was happily warm and drunk by that point and felt it necessary to start singing at the music channel. In my opinion when you have a good wine it will make you feel like this, it should get you merry and red faced rather than rowdy. This morning I have woken up with no hangover whatsoever despite stumbling about to the same degree as I normally would do after a whole bottle of supermarket plonk. So I am happy with my purchases and I urge you to boycott supermarket wines and support your local offie!

13/03/2007 The toilets at work....

The longer you work somewhere the more you start to notice everything and the smallest things start to bother you. Like who is it in the kitchen that straightens out the spoons? Well it was inevitable that I would find that one out if I spent enough time in the kitchen and behold it is some guy who squeezes the teabag against the side of his mug so hard it straightens the spoon out. I had a feeling it wouldn't be Uri Geller, he doesn't work here anyway.

Anyway I commented on the toilets earlier when I started. I had successfully rearranged my routine to fit in with work and my ablutions were firmly settled on work time. However something went wrong yesterday and I ended up using a small section of my evening struggling on my own throne. There is something special about using your own toilet; first I have my books and magazines to read in there but secondly I had forgotten what it was like to have my own privacy without being disturbed by the gruntings and deflations of others.

I think it was Confucius who coined the old Chinese proverb "Only a fool shits where he eats..." but clearly some people who work here haven't come across that one yet. As it's something that comes around at least once a day and happens in the same place each time one would think that others would learn that if they leave the place in a state it's still in a state the next day. It's a bit like why I can't understand the logic behind vandalism and grafitti, these people still have to live there so why are they hell bent on destroying their home?

The work loos aren't terrible but they're not great. Somebody can't lift the seat when they go for a pee in a stall which amazes me. This must be something their parents did not teach them as children. I feel sorry for them in fact. The flush in the middle trap doesn't work as well as the other two, there's a note by the handle which says so but yet the guy who clearly eats the biggest food persists in using that one. There are bogies wiped on the sides of each of them and they never get cleaned up, I don't know why this happens when there is a 1 foot diameter roll of tissue paper right next to you. I admit it's not particularly soft but it is still there for use.

I blame the company who shares the building. None of us would do that surely? Long live my own toilet and roll on the weekend when I will savour my personal time once again.

Bath Bombs

We decided to have a relaxing bath last night and I'd got one of those lovely smelling Bath Bombs from Lush. For the uninitiated these are basically soap, perfume and various other bits and bobs compressed into a ball of what appears to be bicarbonate of soda about the size of a cricket ball. One drops it into the hot bath and it fizzes away, perfumes the water and slightly dyes it the colour of the bath bomb. Great to watch as it spews up to the surface volcanically.

Like this shameless image theft in fact:

Last time I made the mistake of getting a particularlarly exciting looking one that was full of coloured plastic stars. Expecting them to all float at the top of the water was too much to ask and although the bath smelled divine the sharp plastic stars resulted in a bed of sharp spiky bits of plastic at the bottom that spiked my bottom when I sat down. Then all the smaller ones got caught up in the short curlies and worked their way into places they shouldn't have ended up. I was finding them days afterwards in my hair and between my toes.

So this time I got one with petals and flowers expecting the bath to to be filled with Jasmin flowers, rose petals and violets. How wrong could I have been? Petals when they are dried tend to lose a lot of their colour, when they are rehydrated it does not come back, you just get brown wet petals. Now this thing was loaded with pot-pourri and what was created in the bath I can only describe looked like a lot of deat moths floating around with their wings coming off. I don't like moths, it's something my dad has and it's something he picked up off my grandma, a family phobia if you like. Coupled with the fact that I'm blind as a bat I was convincing myself I was in a bath full of dead moths. Not nice. Then the middle bits of the flowers started swelling up and looked like moth bodies, then to cap it off there was a small twig that looked just like a cockroach leg. And then the brown dyde started coming out the flowers and turned the water brown.

Enough was enough and I was forced to jump out the bath and run into the kitchen in the nude with all this stuff stuck all over me to get the seive and a tupperware for the debris. I couldn't put a towel round me because my towel is white and the dye in the slurry would have ruined it. Once strained we were left with fantastic smelling brown bath water and we continued despite not being able to see the bottom of the bath.

So the moral of the story is this: Bath bombs are great but get one without the bits. It's not big and it's not clever :)

Handshaking

I've always taken great joy in the way people shake hands as I believe it can say quite a lot about the other person. I've made up a list of a few types of handshake I've encountered and/or suffered over the years. Have fun reading ;)

Bone Cruncher: Everyone has had this one, it's not limited to strong blokes with big hands, you go to shake hands and the returning squeeze is like an engineer's vice crunching the bones in your hand. The single BIGGEST mistake is to release the pressure before the other person does because as soon as your hand goes soft it literally collapses under the pressure.

Wet Fish: Usually on skinny hands, it is an outstretched flat hand which doesn't respond to the shake when contact is made. Normally slightly cold and damp to the touch.

Squidge: Usually quite a chubby hand. Take a washing up glove and fill it with warm gravy. Tie the end so the gravy doesn't squirt out and now give it a squeeze as if you were shaking it. It's like a hand with no bones in it.

Bunch of Bananas: Ah the giant hand. Can be quite uncomfortable to handshake as it's so big it's not negotiable without approaching slowly. Normally it's an unripe bunch of bananas too as it's rock hard, almost like shaking hands with the statue of David. However, the person on the other end is normally of generous proportions but the shake is generous and pressure not extreme.

Shaker: A very keen handshake, it runs in real fast, grabs your hand and pumps up and down furiously. The first pump down can normally be recognised by a squelch as the shoulder comes semi out of joint before the recipient can tense up sufficiently to counter the action.

"The Bicep" This guy may as well have no elbow joint. The arm comes in pivoting from the shoulder with a 90 degree bend in the elbow and doesn't deviate from this path. It's like a towing hitch and no manner of pumping up and down, back or forth can make it move. The hand and arm simply return any pressure that is applied. The only handshake that can beat "The Bicep" is a Bone Cruncher and only in one instance: If "The Bicep" releases too early by mistake it is doomed.

The Camper: Four fingers are offered limply with the wrist bent upwards and the thumb is applied to the bottom of the handshake. Very light pressure is applied top and bottom making the recipient glance nervously left and right until the damn ordeal is over. Come one guys, it's not an acceptable handshake, sort it out!

The Uncomfortable One: Everybody gets this themselves every now and then. One misjudges the handshake and the other party grabs fingers, thumbs, somewhere round the palm etc. Normally tactically countered by squeezing too hard in the wrong place so the whole handshake is demolished in a manly fashion as if to say "WE GOT THAT WRONG, I DON'T NORMALLY SHAKE HANDS LIKE THAT." So as the other party doesn't 'get the wrong idea' of course.

The Powershake: A preformed hand deliberately begins a journey from the shoulder and arrives, back of the hand facing upwards with the elbow higher than the hand. The hand is shaped as if it were previously holding a McDonalds Big Mac and forces the recipient to offer a submissive upturned hand. The only way to counter this sort of shake is to reply with your own Powershake and battle it out, knuckles up, there and then.

Mates forever: Interlocking thumbs, a bit like an arm wrestle but without a table and standing up. It looks plain ridiculous but some people insist on it :confused:

"I'm the Boss" And finally the old goldie from the man who likes to take charge. A fairly well practiced and professional-feeling shake takes place but an unexpected left hand appears on the end of your elbow and applies pressure. What? Get off me dammnit. The counter to this "I'm the Boss" shake, which aims to take alpha male position, is after the shake with a firm slap on the back of the arm of the other party. Liken it to a light shove. Particularly effective in important business meetings in crippling your opponent into his real position. In your office, not his.