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It’s in the Radio Times and everything: 8:30pm, Sunday, BBC2. Yes, I know it’s a weird slot, but at least it isn’t against Corrie. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think – due warning in the BBC2 listing. Also, there might be a bunch of reviews this weekend, which could go either way… if you spot one, please chuck a comment here. Ta.

We’re playing ‘Cake Face’; perform a facial impression of a biscuit, and invite your workmates to guess. Derek’s rich tea was surprisingly good; Joni’s ginger nut spectacularly angry. Sadly my sterling bath oliver rather failed, since none of my colleagues had heard of them. Outrageous!

Derek’s trumped us all again, however, with his definitive fig roll.

Car back in the garage again. Keep your fingers crossed or offer a prayer to $DEITY. As well as the not-exactly-fitted 12V socket, it’s picked up a rattle in the engine compartment that sounds exactly like a loose bag of spanners. It very well could be a loose bag of spanners, though one suspects even Mercedes-Benz Glasgow couldn’t lose one of those in a Smart engine bay. Surely?

Meanwhile – I met several NESTA folks yesterday. At the risk of sounding entirely sycophantic; if they’re all that interesting/inspiring/entertaining, I’m astonished they get any work done. Lovely, lovely people; fascinating discussions. I’ve no idea if any of them go anywhere, but I’ve several things to think about.

More later.

Is rhyming slang reversible? I ask because somebody in the office appears to have nicked a colleague’s supply of tea. Does that make them a tea-leaf of the thief, or…

I’m confused.

Anyone who struggled through my recent rant about the Mercedes garage in central Glasgow probably knows what’s coming when I say: I went in to collect the car today.

It goes back in on Thursday.

This time the right tyres were on the correct wheels, without the optional extras of nails and screws. However, they’d also replaced the burnt-out 12V socket as a warranty job. It still doesn’t work, of course, and indeed wasn’t actually fixed to the centre console. Not fixed to the extent that when I tried to plug in the air compressor to test it, the socket disappeared down the back of the dash. In fact, the entire centre console is now wobbly, with several bits falling off and out. A Merc technician – the last guy in the service area, and hence the poor sap who had to try to effect a fix on the spot – declared it ‘a right pig’s ear,’ which is an equally accurate but somewhat more polite description than my own.

I’ve requested a full written record of all work done to the car this year, with dates and parts details (third request for same, incidentally). There will be letters. Meanwhile: top Google hit for ‘Smart Roadster Glasgow.’

Zebra. An uncommon word, and yet one which – sporting as it does such a glorious swashy initial capital – should feature more often on this blog. Coincidentally, tonight I encountered the noble beast for the first time outwith a zoo. Somewhat surprisingly, it was on my dinner plate. Wrapped in tortilla, and smothered in rather too much cheese. Perhaps a good thing, however, since zebra turns out to be blandly sweet, a tad greasy, and not unlike – I’m assured – dog.

The wild boar was significantly better, however. Kangaroo as good as ever, if you like that kind of thing. Venison mightily fine, as is its wont. But the revelation was springbok, which turns out to be wonderful stuff.

I should explain. I went for dinner tonight with Rosie to Khublai Khan, an ostensibly Mongolian restaurant that is, one suspects, about as authentic as a pony that’s had embarrassing whitewashed stripes painted on it and a sign hung around its neck reading ‘Zebra.’ Nevertheless it’s an absolute hoot of an eaterie. A flat fee (£20 – fair) gets you a starter, as many trips to the grill as you like, and a pudding.

The starters were variously bonkers. Alongside my aforementioned zebra enchilada, Rosie had some whacko marinated kangaroo thing with a cranberry relish, which surprised mostly on the grounds of the kangaroo being cold. Perhaps we should have gone for the yak ribs?

The main course is where ‘bonkers’ turns to ‘entirely surreal.’ Wander over to the grill, grab a balti dish along the way, and fill it from a procession of stalls. First up: noodles or rice. Easy enough. Next: veg, from carrots to beansprouts to water chestnuts to broccoli. Now: meat and fish. As well as the exotics, lamb and beef, mussels, prawns. Shark. That sort of thing. Then a vast and confusing table covered in pots and dishes, carrying enough components to make about eighteen billion different sauces, from fragrant thai-style coconut and lemon grass fancies to smoky cajun goop to bog-standard curry. Stare blankly, take a lucky dip… or follow the suggestions on the handy chart above the table. Finally, nurse the heaped ingredients over to the chef, who slaps the whole lot on a hotplate and paddles it around in front of you until it’s done.

Now, this could be criticised for being essentially a jumped-up pan-asian takeaway, but the whole thing is carried off with enough insouciance that we found it a huge giggle. It’s not quite clear if the owners really do have their tongues in their cheeks, but whatever suspicions one may already have are heightened by the sweets menu. This drops all pretense at the ‘Mongolian’ nonsense and settles for sticky toffee pudding, crème brulée, and (our choices) an orange chocolate mousse and raspberry and meringue crush. Both of which were fabulous.

While it would be perfectly possible to naff up your main courses entirely – I was a tad ham-fisted with the chilli on one pass, oregano on another – there’s no denying the novelty value; it’s not so much a ‘fine meal out’ as an activity evening that happens to revolve around food. Utterly mad, actually rather good food, excellent staff… and zebra. A hoot.

Some time ago I wrote about how I’d managed to free myself of unwanted junk marketing calls from Toucan Telecom. Interestingly, that post shows up (as I write) as the fifth hit in a Google search for the company. The sixth hit is another blog post on the same subject, and as I mention in comments there, anyone researching Toucan online before signing up with them is thus likely to read negative views.

Customers have always had voices, but now those voices can not only be heard, they can be found. For example, I’ll be running frequent Google searches for ‘Smart Glasgow’ to see whether my last post crops up there. I’m already the fifth hit for ‘Smart Roadster Glasgow’.

I’m no marketing guru, but I can’t help thinking this is a big deal. Now we’re all ‘mystery shoppers’, with the twist that our reports are public. This is, of course, exactly what Hugh Macleod is trying to twist to advantage with Stormhoek wine. The idea there is to – quite literally – give the product away to bloggers in the hope that we’ll talk about it, and thus promote the brand as a secondary effect. Which is either cripplingly silly or unbelievably clever, depending on your point of view. And, indeed, the outcome.

Hugh’s blog is worth reading on all this, and the core ideas are expounded in The Cluetrain. Which, by the way, I’ve always found rather hard reading, but I tend to think I should persevere.

[update 21/9/2005: my Toucan post is now the third Google hit for ‘Toucan Telecom.’ One place above Toucan’s own site. Remarkable.]

Alternative titles for this post included ‘Not very Smart’ and ‘Fscking Mercedes-Benz!’ Just so you’re warned.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that my current car is a Smart Roadster Coupé (link may not work – blame the D-C marketing department if it fails). It has its faults but I basically consider it to be cracking fun, surprisingly practical, and environmentally less awful than most alternatives that have more than two wheels. I would not, however, recommend the thing for one basic reason – the local dealer.

To be fair, Leeds (where I bought the car) and Perth (where its first service was done) were OK. Not great, but OK. However, neither is exactly convenient, since I live in Glasgow. And Smart of Glasgow, the local Mercedes-Benz dealer… suck. In my experience they’ve been awful, and it’s high time I blogged about them.

Earlier in the year, while I was in the middle of Mechannibals, I had to take the thing in for warranty work to solve a water leak. I never blogged the outcome of that, which was that after a fortnight or so I collected the car… and they’d done precisely nothing to it. The roof seals were the same, the rain-damaged rear carpet unchanged (and even more mouldy): they hadn’t even washed it. The only discernible difference was a random bit of loose plastic tucked under the handbrake, the origin and purpose of which was mysterious.

A second visit ensued, initially estimated at a week but eventually taking five weeks to get right, under the personal supervision of the workshop manager and the head of the service department. A loan car was available (and occasionally taken, though as luck would have it I was mostly away from home with a company car). Not once was I called back when promised. Though as it happened the inconvenience wasn’t great, I was singularly unimpressed with their ‘generous’ (sic) free tank of fuel. The full story’s a bit longer, of course, but basically: they sucked. The leak was fixed, but it wasn’t dealt with well, and we never did find out what the random bit of plastic was.

So I fully intended to have the second service, due now, done in Perth. Unfortunately I picked up a nasty puncture in the near-side rear last week. Ouch. Expensive, and driving up to Perth this weekend didn’t seem such a good idea with a nail through the sidewall. The dealer’s price for a new tyre was within a hair of Kwik-Fit’s, so on Friday it went in to Glasgow for the service plus tyre. They called at five or so and rather brusquely said it was ready. Well, I was in studio, so I picked it up today.

Or rather, I tried to. Once I’d found some tissue to wipe the dirty great handprint off the roof and clean some grease off the door handle, I walked around the car. They’d splashed some water at it rather ineffectually and, mysteriously, changed all the tyre dust caps for bling metal ones that will get nicked before I’ve even parked at home. And there’s a new tyre… on the near-side front. The rear tyre was almost flat, and still had a nail sticking out of it. Umm… what the heck?

So I storm back in again – for those who don’t know me, it takes a lot to make me ‘storm’ anywhere, but I was seething at this – and demand an explanation. Not for the first time I see one of the service staff blanch as they realise somebody – possibly them – has screwed up. First they try to blame me for specifying the wrong wheel. Bad move. “The authorisation I signed,” I say gently, as if to a small child, “specifies near-side rear. And I did sign it, unlike the last time you screwed up when I specifically didn’t authorise any of the work you carried out.” I’m not sure it’s possible for somebody who’s already blanched to discolour further, but this chap tried hard. The history of my car is well-known to the dealership’s service staff, since most of them have been involved at some point.

All becomes a little more clear when they manage to fish out the tyre that should have been disposed of, but hasn’t been because it’s a weekend – there’s a dirty great screw through the shoulder. OK, fair enough, they’ve spotted something I hadn’t: amazingly, the tyre hadn’t deflated at all. The dealer staff seem somewhat relieved that this exonerates them. But hang on, I point out, the ‘B’ service is supposed to include a full examination of the tyres for pressures and tread depth, right? How come they missed the dirty great nail that’s still in the side of the rear tyre, and the fact that it’s visibly more than a little flat? Again with the grey faces. They passed a car as ‘inspected’ when it’s clearly not safe to drive.

Meanwhile, the shoulder-screwed front might be repairable but in my book it’s a hairy thing to do in that sort of location. I dislike taking risks with primary components, and a high-speed blowout is more risk than I’m willing to take. So sure, I’m peeved that I’ll have to shell out for a second tyre – but what ticks me off here is that the dealer has to order the thing in, and therefore I won’t get the car back until probably Tuesday. Had they rung me on Friday, rather than apparently assuming I can’t tell one end of the car from the other, this could have been avoided.

So, that’s three visits to Mercedes-Benz Glasgow, and at least as many screw-ups. Once this current sorry chapter is over I shall not, of course, ever take the car there again. More specifically, I find it hard to believe that I’ll ever buy another Mercedes or Smart. The cars are great – the support is disastrous.

The contrast with BMW and Mini couldn’t be greater. In almost three years of Mini ownership I can’t recall any transaction with any BMW dealer that wasn’t at least pleasant; the majority left me surprised and more than happy. It’s not that they bent over backwards to do the right thing – they simply did the right thing as a matter of routine, which is far more impressive. The customer service had the air of quality one expects from BMW’s reputation; Mercedes’ does not.

I love the Smart Roadster, but I wish I’d bought another Mini.

Hey, Damien – you theme of transience and motion, you – seen this?

For those who don’t know Damien: as of rather recently – or a few years, depends how you count – he’s a professional cameraphone photographer/artist. His blog LowResolution is hosted over on Deletetheweb. More recently, he’s had an exhibition in Liverpool, and was the official cameraphone photographer at the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention this week. Yes, you read that right. The event’s been blogged and videoblogged by Gia, but I’ve only just found the blog address so I’ve lots of catching up to do.

Damien’s just starting his own blog – this time with words and everything. Add him to your subscribe lists and all that.

New from the MySociety genii:, the curiously-capitalised PlaceOpedia. Think Google Maps ∩ Wikipedia. Brilliant. Except that, as I write, all the links read ‘#needsJS’ and hence it doesn’t actually work. Doubtless it will, soon.

Also: YourHistoryHere, a very similar deal only for historical data. I can’t immediately see why the two sites are separate, rather than having temporal metadata attached to the Placeopedia entries and then allowing filtering, but hey, what do I know? I’m frazzled after studio and not thinking straight.

Aha! Found a quote from Tom Steinberg thus:

This site is on limited circulation at the moment, and is only supposed to be a mySociety demo, not a big posh project like PledgeBank. It may not be obvious, but the most important feature of YourHistoryHere is the construction of an underlying system for collecting and sharing geographic annotations in an open syndicated format, so you can use the yummy local data people leave for your own purposes. We’re building two sites that show how this can be useful, this one and Placeopedia.com, and we’d love to share the code for other ideas. Anyone want to build WhereIHadMyFirstKiss.com?

That makes more sense, then.