But surpassing the wildest dreams of eBay and comparison shopping sites – which after all have to cope with the burden of P&P – is the joy of the jumble and car boot sale. We stopped by a car boot sale on the way back from the coast a couple of weekends ago and picked up over 20 items of clothing for Emily at the grand total cost of £7.50. Similar purchases in shops would have cost us hundreds, and even occasional eBay purchases, with the aforementioned P&P would probably have stacked up to over £100. Fantastico.

In addition to the ludicrous deals, there’s some enjoyment to be had in seeing other peoples curios on display. I’ve always been comfortably materialistic – in the sense that I enjoy stuff rather than assign all value to it – so find it gives great insight into what other people take pleasure in to wander around these jumble sales.

Sadly this weekend’s car boot expedition was called off on account of rain, but there are a couple of more opportunities before the weather turns properly sour and the season ends…

Was astonished, in the process, to discover the difference an ‘official’ second hand dealer made. The car we were looking at – a relatively recent (automatic transmission, hence rarity) Golf – had dropped a disproportionately small amount from its ‘as new’ price as far as I could tell. I paused to be astonished at the second-hand value of VWs.

The moment one of our target cars turned up at an independent dealer, a further 10% off the original retail price vanished – for a car with lower mileage than the ones I’d been looking at. I’m avoiding ‘official’ dealers like the plague in the future, although with our current car portfolio we won’t be buying anything for a long while, unless we happen to win the lottery…

One thing did immediately become apparent; other than the retailer made ‘generics’, bikes are expensive. When I asked my colleague @geowgeow about one brand of affordable retailer-manufactured own-brand bike, his one word review was "crap." They fact that all bikes seem to use fundamentally the same components (Shimano gears, etc) makes it almost impossible to tell them apart on paper; you either have to mystically ‘know’ or you have to be able to tell by looking and feeling it. Which I obviously can’t do.

In the end, we went for a well-customer-reviewed Trek hybrid to match the one my family got me a few years back, and which I knew from experience of Trek was likely to be decent – and it is!

Interestingly Trek  will only deliver via their resellers (and not direct to consumer), so the store has an opportunity to tune, tweak and assemble the bike for you and guarantee a certain quality of experience.  Of course, the fact you then have to take a wheel off to get it in the car doesn’t help you when you get home, so it took an amount of fiddling to stop the wheels rubbing against the mudguards…

Now I know that the media programmes will be inundated with mentions, and perhaps even Amazon might get more tweets than it could cope with, but Mini was the only company to get back to me. The theory of having a direct connection to a business is a good one but it seems that not everyone is coping as well with providing an outlet to direct interaction as you’d hope.

I think brands should stick a disclaimer up there if the account isn’t monitored, or if people don’t intend to respond. It’s only fair to set expectations…. You can understand why even slightly arbitrary studies like this one come to the conclusions that they do… Or maybe it’s that – as a mere customer and a PageRank 2 blog writer – I don’t merit their attention…

Hybrids have a bad rep. They’re inexplicably shaped like dinosaur eggs – closer to a Jetsons view of what a modern car should look like than any actual designers, one would assume – famed for sluggish performance, plagued by technology issues and challenged on their supply chain eco-credentials – after all, if the components have travelled the world seven times over to allow the car to be assembled in the first place, then how much difference to the environment does the ‘hybrid’ make?

This review sums it up:

Eco-friendly cars are often grim, hair-shirted things that you suffer as penance for your emissions, even though they pump out less CO2 than their standard brethren.

Which is why I think its fantastic – although depressingly late to market – that there’s a new wave of environmentally friendly cars rolling off production lines around the world – whether its ‘Greenline’ (Skoda), ‘Bluemotion’ (VW) or ‘EfficientDynamics’ (BMW), the (German, anyway) manufacturers have cottoned onto this eco-friendly thing and are rapidly revising their product line. Since 2007 or so these cars have been entering the market and whilst – in the used car market at least – they still command a premium over their standard rivals, they do provide a number of key benefits thanks to a number of cool bits of technology.

The benefits:

1. Ludicrous mileage – over 80 MPG in some cases, which will top out older hybrids
2. Tax-free, mostly, thanks to low emissions
3. Some of the cars have even lower emissions than many hybrids
4. (Relatively) normal handling – the car’s body mass index hasn’t been skewed by a heavy battery pack

The tech that gives it this awesome mileage:

1. Stop/start tech. The engine switches off when the car rolls to a halt (say at a traffic light). For urban driving, this makes a big difference.
2. Regenerative braking. The kinetic energy lost when the car brakes is captured, generally in the car battery, for later use.
3. Sill extensions & other aerodynamic tweaks – help seal the car and reduce drag
4. Engine refinements – high torque diesel, usually
5. Gear shift indicators – to help you drive more ecofficiently

I’m looking for a possible replacement for Horse (our ageing 68 BHP Skoda Fabia) and am very tempted by one of these cars – specifically the Golf in the above review – but they cost much money. Anyone have any advice?

It’s not bad. I mean, it’s not fruit of the loom grade cotton, and I’m not sure how it’ll hold up to the washing machine, but the print looks great and the t-shirt is both comfortable and fits well – although slightly large  for its size .

I can’t figure out a way to subscribe via RSS to the daily site updates, though, which seems a tactical error. Am I missing something, nice people at Qwertee?

Other designs of note – Malvin and Hobbes, Jumping Jack Flash, Jedi to the Future, Muttley Crew, Sesame Street Fighter and another Firefly favourite – Leaf on the wind.

If it holds up to the laundry I’m likely to become a regular customer…

It’s not without its positive features: the shopping basket is very good, as is the offer browser and product information screens. It’s just the actual process of shopping that is a bit too slow and fiddly.

I’m hoping that Waitrose can keep me posted of developments to the site as the Ocado delivery charges are steep and I’m not sure Amanda is sufficiently convinced of the virtues of online grocery shopping to agree to a scheduled commitment (which comps delivery on Ocado).

What do other people think? In store, online, and who with? This is all part of my bid to escape the supermarket lottery of life, which has us stuck with local Tesco stores…

And often I’ve been impressed at the ‘limited wrapping’ options available on some products – where they’ll tape a USB key to the inside of an envelope or something before they post it to you. Great stuff there, guys.

But something went wrong this weekend. I ordered a ‘food umbrella’ – one of those things you put over the fruit bowl when the weather gets warmer to keep the flies out. At £2.25, it was not an expensive purchase, and as a folded up piece of lace doily, essentially, it wasn’t heavy or bulky.

So I was a little surprised at the box (pictured). Not sure what in Amazon’s P&P system went wrong there but  we were couriered a box that you could probably have squeezed about 100 of the umbrellas into – in which sat a single, solitary, lonely food umbrella.

D’oh! I’m suddenly curious as to whether this was an automated error or if someone actually went to the time and trouble to package that in there. I think I’ll ask Amazon UK on Twitter and will keep you posted! I’ve also submitted the picture via Amazon’s packaging feedback website – hopefully help make the service that little bit better!

It struck me that online delivery services free you from the supermarket lottery of life. Whilst proximity to good groceries was an important factor in us choosing our home, we weren’t specific about the grocer, and as it happens we’re in a Tesco catchment area – the nearest Waitrose is 15 miles away, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s about twice the distance of the local Tesco. This means you get accustomed to a certain level of mediocrity from your shopping after a while, and you get constrained by the choices Tesco imposes on you. One massive bonus of the village we’re in is we have two local butchers, so at least for meat we have some extra choice… and of course our garden will hopefully soon provide some veg.

That said, the delivery charges on Ocado are steep and we’re not sure yet if we’re going to set up a recurring shop (which gives you free delivery) as there is a certain joy and satisfaction in actually going to a shop and getting inspiration for meals that way. OK, it’s not Rick Stein wandering through the markets of a Mediterranean town, but it’s less sterile than hitting a virtual checkout…

Carrying the thought through (as you do) however led us to the fallacy of this – inflation is running at over 4%, so a 1 pound sausage roll would have to cost 1.04 next year and so on. So the silly prices return.

@geowgeow speculated that rounding for tidiness is probably worsening inflation – store managers that don’t like price tags that say 1.04 round up to 1.05 and BANG – up goes inflation by another percentage point.

Alan Sugar might be happy with the entrepreneurial instincts shown here, but Mervyn King? He’s probably unimpressed by the entire situation.

1. Buttons are fiddly. Push-fasteners would be better.

2. Fasteners should be on the front or side of clothes. Things on the back are annoying.

3. Anything that requires pulling over a baby’s head is almost automatically less good than anything that doesn’t.

4. Anything that requires actual tying is optimistic at best, except with shoelaces and even that’s a bit much.

5. There’s this thing – velcro – which is awesome. Apply liberally.

6. Thick clothes need more wiggle room – baby’s arms don’t bend like spaghetti into tight spaces.

7. Emily’s really enjoying the extra freedom she has from being a bit, erm, nakeder, in the warm weather here in Malaysia.

…I’m sure that there are fashion designers out there would would read this with disdain, saying “fasteners are so last year, dah-ling,” but as a Dad I’d pick practicality and comfort over style every time. This isn’t an argument I’ll win every time but it’s nice to voice the thought.

Crap, thought I. And having finally managed to book in for a date Amanda could drop it in for servicing and lend me the other car… it went off again. Hopefully for good this time.

Not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with it (we hope), but between the two things I’ve added ‘new car’ to the list of things I obsess over quietly but have no actual intention of spending money on. That said, my obsessions tend to take a semi-practical nature, so rather than dreaming of a Maserati or vintage Mercedes SL I could never afford, I’ve been day dreaming about semi-practical cars.

Criteria? Affordable ish. Modern-ish. Proper heating, central locking and automatic windows (non of which Horse, for all his strengths, has in any great measure). Back doors and seats that will fit a carseat. Reliable. Relatively fuel- and maintenance efficient. Fun to drive and a bit sporty.

My current fantasy frontrunner? The Mazda RX-8. Jeremy Clarkson loves it (for what that’s worth), and I think its a pretty good looking car. It is ludicrously affordable second hand and there’s a Mazda dealer about 500m from my house with a pretty good looking one on the forecourt. Maybe a test drive is in order… as well as someone explaining the benefit of a rotary engine to me.

But other than this, semi-aspirational cars seem to be few and far between. I couldn’t get excited about driving a Seat Léon or something like that. Any other ideas from my petrolhead friends?

This is me in my new super-comfy check pyjama bottoms and comfy longsleeve tee. I may post more pics in the days to come if I can get some interesting pics and Emily doesn’t spew on too much of it.

So, reasons I love White Stuff clothes / brand.

Clothes:
1) They fit me. They fit me when I was fat, and now I’m thinner, I’m a medium and that feels good. It’s been years since I’ve been a medium in anything. Although a lot of their ‘L’ stuff fits me pretty well too (for my larger readers, they go up to XXXL in some clothing lines!).
2) They suit me. Without looking like I’m trying to be fashionable (inevitable that I look like I’m trying and also that I fail), and without looking like I’m a slob (which is what tends to happen otherwise)
3) They’re SUPER comfortable and pretty hard wearing. Really nice cottons for most stuff and this amazing cotton/cashmere blend for a lot of their jumpers which I like.
4) Lots of WS colour ranges suit me.

The brand
1) They’ve sent me clothes as a *thank you* for a mention. They didn’t ask me to blog about them, and have made no particular effort to drive a hard sales pitch. As a social media douchebag myself, its pretty gratifiying to have seen this done well.
2) They’re persistently doing friendly, funky, crazy stuff, from drinks and biscuits in store to a bus travelling around the country to a couple of elderly brand evangelists. Fun stuff, accessible, enjoyable.
3) They’re creative in-store. As well as the aforementioned drinks and biscuits there are frequently novelty freebies of some value (decks of cards, etc) as well as a variety of in-store promotions (a Cluedo style whodunit was one I recall of late) which are engaging without being tedious.
4) Their e-promotions are well-targeted and well-written. I actually quite like geting their mailers.
5) They seem like really nice people.

So kudos, White Stuff, makers of awesome stuff, and thank you. I’ll shop with you again soon (there’s a coat I have my eye on), and this winter on more days than not 100% of my clothing will be from your collections.

Now, do you do baby stuff?? ;-)

With Hippo, everything’s new. Silver Cross vs. Phil & Ted’s vs. Bugaboo? Baby Bjorn vs Tomy? Mothercare vs. Mamas and Papas vs. Cosatto vs John Lewis vs…? And so on. The few familiar brands bring some comfort – but they’re not specialist, so you wonder if they’re good at this. The prestige becomes generic.

And I remain clueless.

Anyone with any insight, or blogs I should read – please let me know… As well as all the baby stuff, with the house move we’re looking at Liebherr fridges and Bosch dryers – and need to take the great Flymo vs. Bosch Rotak lawnmower decision.

There’s entirely too much to think about!