Cappuccino and Convulsions

There’s nothing I like more than spending a Sunday morning in my local branch of Costa coffee, enjoying a nice hot Cappuccino and browsing through the Sunday newspapers. After a hectic hour or so down the gym it’s the perfect way to unwind (and pile back on the pounds with a chocolate muffin!).

However, for some odd reason, today was rather busy and the shop supplied newspapers were scattered over the place, with only the useless Sunday supplements left in the paper rack. So, I had no choice in the matter – it was either reading the Sunday Times property supplement, the Mail on Sunday “Live” supplement or stare blankly into my coffee or out of the window. Given the amount of happy couples frequenting the establishment, I played safe and opted for both supplements.

So after looking through the property supplement – which handily listed lots of compact, i.e. read “tiny”, one bedroom apartments in London for a quarter of a million pounds (extremely useful for all of those home hunters in Manchester) I finally moved on to the “Live” magazine. It was at this point that I ended up choking on my cappuccino.

You see, there was a page that contained some one-eighth scale models of cars, including such beauties as a Ferrari F430 and Porsche 356 Speedster. Ordinarily, it’s not much to make you choke – unless you’re a bit of a petrol head and someone who worships Jeremy Clarkson as a god - but after spraying coffee everywhere the Heimlich manoeuvre was urgently required after I spotted the price of said models. These things cost well over £1000 pounds – with the Ferrari model costing a whopping £2,750 pounds from Amalgam. You could buy a real car (albeit not a Ferrari, perhaps a Fiat Punto) for that sort of money!

Still, you do get a lot for your money. For example, for the Ferrari, the actual design team supplied the exact specifications so the model is accurate the smallest detail. You may also be glad to learn that you can also order a customised model tweaked to your own specifications. Perhaps you should opt for the model with the satellite navigation and climate control system.

Still, on the plus side, at least you'd have no trouble parking - although you'd have more worries in losing it. Also, I wonder whether it's congestion charge exempt?