Ageing, arsonists, Richard Bacon, caravans, cyclists in lycra, fly tippers, January, Lord Mandelson, bad manners, middle lane hogs, National Grid, pot holes, speed cameras and humps, Tewkesbury Borough Council, thieves, untaxed and uninsured vehicles (you and I pay), violence and Steve Wright. The above constitutes just a mere fraction of what gets up my nose, thus conspiring to spoil the smoother running of an increasingly turbulent life. Some may be well-rounded prejudices, others personal dislikes that induce worrying bursts of the Victor Meldrews, predictable as they are involuntary as I romp headlong into the springtime of my dotage. I should be grateful that within these pages and others I have a release valve.
Anyway, I shall not dwell on any of the above today. Spring, after all, is taking tentative peaks from behind the clouds of a seemingly endless winter, so we must celebrate its joys and be as cheery as we can in the dying embers of Gordon Brown’s government.
You won’t spot the weld as I now move on to cars. Korean cars. Not North Korean cars, obviously. Nothing comes out of that horrific and paranoid dictatorship, except misery. Their hated neighbours in the South, however, enjoy a burgeoning industry, much of it based on the manufacture of increasingly good motor cars, namely Hyundai and Kia - oh, and Daewoo, now sold as, ahem, Chevrolets over here.
At the end of last year I biffed about the place in a variety of Hyundais, smaller ones of which reaped great sales benefits through the now defunct scrappage scheme. The irony here is that this didn’t put food on the tables of British car workers, but that is for discussion another time.
In the run-up to Easter I spent a not unpleasant week driving the all-new Kia Sorento, mine with top KX-3 spec with a 2.2 litre diesel lump and auto shift. There’s a lot of standard fruit here, including keyless go, as they say at Renault, and an agreeable full-length panoramic roof. Kia’s image may still be a bit "budget", so £29,795 for the top Sorento may seem wallet-rupturingly steep. You can get into a two-wheel drive 2.4 petrol job for about £20K, but why in the name of all that is holy would you do that?
To be fair, this is a great improvement on the old car and is well nailed together, though the interior is more Lidl than Waitrose. Sufficient grunt with reasonable off-road ability, this big seven-seater offers fair customer satisfaction, just as long as brand and image don’t top the priority list. The clincher for many Kia punters must be the astounding see-me-out seven-year warranty.
Unfortunately, in this segment, brand and image count for a lot. For a little less wonga, surprisingly, my Mitsubishi Outlander offers more of everything, including a much finer interior that comes with pedigree - as the triple diamond badge would suggest.
Of course, we all need 4x4s to negotiate our war-ravaged roads these days, so if the Sorento cap fits, wear it.