New Car ... and an Earthquake!

Just to prove that 2020 is a peculiarly perverse year, we can now add earthquake to the list of things it has thrown at us.

 The UK is not exactly known for seismic activity, and anything more than a tiny tremor is rare - so much so that I have never noticed one before. This morning I was sitting at my nice, new desk working when there was a cracking sound, the room shook, and the floor jolted and felt as though someone had hit it from below with a gigantic sledgehammer. I thought at first that something heavy must have fallen somewhere (though couldn't imagine how!), but soon realised there was no damage and that it might have been an earthquake. It was enough to wake a sleeping teenager(!) and I was quite relieved when she said her friend who lives about half a mile away had texted to ask what had happened - clearly it wasn't just us and our house wasn't doing inexplicable things all on its own! M was downstairs taking in a delivery and completely missed it - we think he shut the door just as it happened. 

Various neighbours went outside to see what was going on, and we all concluded it was either an earthquake, or a shock from a very large explosion somewhere. Within a few minutes it was showing up on various earthquake websites. Apparently it was 3.3 magnitude, 10km deep, with its epicentre only a mile or so from us. Tiny in global terms, but quite large for the UK and very unexpected! According to the British Geological Survey the last earthquake of this size in this area was one near Oxford in 1764. Our earthquake even made the main BBC news programme - the last time our town made the news was an unusual bit of local drama a few years ago when some bungling thieves tried to prise a cash machine out of the wall of a bank with a fork lift truck and ended up reversing it into the building behind before running off empty handed. 

Yesterday's comparatively sedate excitement was a trip to Peterborough to collect our new car. We love it! It felt a slightly brave decision to go electric, but 24 hours in we already can't imagine going back. Easy to drive, easy (and cheap) to recharge, and with some very nifty bits of tech. On the way home yesterday I tried out Pro Pilot, which describes itself as "hand on assisted driving" (or something along those lines), but is actually pretty much self-drive for fast roads. It adjusts speed, slowing down if there is a car in front, and keeps the car centred in the lane. Feeling the steering wheel drive itself is a bit disconcerting, but I think once used to it long distance driving will be much easier. There is also a phone app which can do  things like checking the charge level of the car and switching the heat on in advance on cold mornings. So different to our old car, which reached the technical heights of having a USB socket! We are also pleased with the Pod Point charger, which is as easy to use as plugging a phone in to charge.