Author: Kim du Toit

Stupid Money

Drive Time, Marketing / Advertising, The Gun Thing

Via Insty (again), I see that Overfinch has crafted a line of bespoke Range Rovers in Holland & Holland livery:

The 2025 Range Rover Holland & Holland Overfinch’s interior is much more overtly extravagant, though Range Rover’s minimalist form language still dominates. Most surfaces are wrapped in Bridge of Weir leather, and those that are not are instead covered with open-pore French walnut veneer or real metal. The stainless-steel inserts in the doors feature the same engraved scroll work as on the “Royal” shotguns, the engraved diamonds embedded in the veneers in the doors echo those on the guns’ stocks, and the Holland & Holland crest is inlaid on the front and rear center consoles, the latter housing a Champagne cooler and a pair of Champagne flutes.

The leather seats feature a unique quilting pattern that also echoes the Holland & Holland diamond motif and features illustrations of game birds stitched into the backrests. In the duo-tone colorway the front seats are trimmed mainly in Harris Green and the rears mainly in London Tan.

Sounds like something an Arab oil sheikh would want to putter around his Scottish estate in, playing a Laird.  Still, I like that interior.

Of course, from the outside the thing is 2025 Rolls-Royce-level Fugly:

…but not as ugly as its price of $650,000.

To put it into perspective, that’s just over the price of three new H&H Royal and a couple-three of their secondhand Royal shotguns.

Lovely as all get-out, but not even with a lottery winning would I be tempted.  And that’s by any of them:  the H&H Range Rover or the H&H shotguns, which taken as the package above would set you back about a million bucks.

Maybe the parvenu status-seekers of today’s ultra-wealthy set would be tempted by such blatant brand-harvesting… hence the title of this post.

As for myself (given a lottery winning as above), my choices are below the fold. Read more

Not Interested

Guy Stuff, Toys

Never having had the financial wherewithal to buy any upper-end watches, I’ve never let that stop me from looking at the market — just as not ever having had the money to buy a Ferrari hasn’t stopped me from looking at expensive sports cars and that market.

Yet even if I had the funds, I’d never buy a Rolex watch.

I know, Rolexes are (generally speaking) well-made timepieces and may be worth the moolah necessary for their acquisition.  All the cool kids wear them — which is actually a negative for me, of course — but besides that, if you want to get a watch that will essentially last your entire life, the Rolex is a good bet.  And of course, if your hobbies take you underwater, then Rolex reigns supreme.  (If like me you’re unwilling to venture into an unfamiliar medium filled with things with teeth and murderous intent, then obviously this would not be a factor.)

But the reason that I’d never buy a Rolex is that they’re big, chunky and bulky, and while that may be the current fashion (another reason for my unwillingness), I’m more of the dress watch persuasion.

And of course, because I prefer a manual-wind over automatic- and quartz (battery-powered) watches is yet another reason.  (Of digital watches we shall not speak:  in other words, if you want to extol all the virtues of your $25 Casio-type watch, please restrain yourself because that just irritates me.)

Here’s a typical Rolex (I say “typical” because like members of certain ethnic groups, they all look the same to me):

Oh, and did I mention that I can’t wear metal bracelet straps because I have hairy arms, and the stupid things catch on and tug at the hairs until I rip the thing off and throw it across the room?  (I know, the Rolex might survive such an action, but whatever.)  It’s pretty much leather for me, in other words, and Rolex doesn’t like their watches to be thus equipped, so screw ’em.

Finally, like the aforementioned Ferrari, Rolex also plays reindeer games with potential customers, restricting access to certain models, thereby driving up the price and thus making them all the more “exclusive” (i.e. only available to the gullible and status-hungry). I’m not going to play that game, ever, in any market.

And for those who want something of quality like a Rolex but of sane pricing, here are some alternatives across all five popular Rolex models:  Submariner, Datejust, GMT, Explorer and Daytona.  I’m not in the market for any of the alternatives, of course, because they’re all still chunky and use metal bracelets straps.  For the watch geeks on the same topic, there’s always Teddy Baldassarre.

My biggest fear is that my beloved Tissot Heritage model may one day break irretrievably, and I won’t be able to find a replacement.  #Discontinued #OldSpiceFreshRedux


(yeah, that’s my hairy wrist)

Never Mind The Vampires

Food & Drink

It all began shortly after I began my career at The Great Big Research Company, when I called on a client for the first time.  Our meeting had been scheduled immediately after lunch, and when I walked into his office and shook hands with him, I was nearly sick.

To say that his breath reeked would be an egregious understatement:  it smelled like he’d just eaten a dozen cloves of garlic.  And it got worse.  As the meeting progressed, he started to perspire (not unusual in midsummer Johannesburg back then, where offices seldom had A/C), and the smell of garlic permeated not only the entire room but even my clothing.

The reason I knew it had stuck to my clothes was when I walked back into the office and my secretary waved her hand in a fanning motion and asked whether I’d had Italian food for lunch.

I’ve hated garlic ever since.

Also, because I saw clients at least once a week, I decided that there was no way I would ever potentially offend them by smelling of garlic;  so I made a conscious effort to avoid garlic-laden foods.  Over time, I actually developed such a strong aversion to the stuff that my long-suffering wives had to take it out of any cooking recipes.

So what had started as a courtesy to clients turned out to be a lifelong aversion.  (I remember watching some cookery show, when the “chef”, in cooking two steaks, crushed five cloves of garlic in their preparation.  I was nearly sick at the very thought of how the meat would taste — and I love steak.)

Feel free to imagine my experiences in Paris and Rome — no doubt a factor in my always choosing to eat outdoors, now that I think of it.

This post was inspired by this article, which extols the virtues of garlic as a cure for just about everything, and by our dinner with the Son&Heir last week, where he and his girlfriend ordered snails as a shared starter.  I could smell the garlic from across the table, but fortunately, it was barely noticeable, even to my garlic-sensitive nostrils.

I know that this little preference (or rather, non-preference) of mine is going to cause outright mirth and shakes of the head, but there it is.  The stuff reeks and I want no part of it, despite all its purported health benefits.

Just Camouflage

Taxes and Theft

You may recall that the loathsome former NYfC Mayor Bloomberg once declared war on super-sized drinks in that poxy city because people were getting too fat from the drinking thereof, or something.  So as an actual ban would essentially be unenforceable, he slapped a consumption tax on them.

How nice:  promote health while raking in the dollars.  (I’m sure the latter had no bearing on his action, of course. [eyecross] )

I was reminded of this when I read that the equally-loathsome British Labourite Wes Streeting has slapped a tax on sugary drinks.  (Okay, he just extended and raised the “temporary” tax on food on this particular category, but the effect is the same.)

The oily little shit then made this nauseating statement:

“This government will not look away as children get unhealthier,” the Health Secretary told the Commons.

Makes you want to give him a swift slap, dunnit?

And as with Bloomberg, the poison is in the details, as the tax may raise as much as £45million a year or more for the Treasury.

What about all those obese children?

Whitehall’s own estimates suggest it will only trim 0.3kcal off the daily intake of 5 to 10 year olds and 0.4kcal off 11 to 18 year olds.

Well, there ya go, then.

What I really love is all the contortions necessary to make all this happen:

The change will affect packaged milkshakes and coffees, but not drinks made in cafes and restaurants.

The exemption for milk-based drinks will be replaced with a ‘lactose allowance’ to account for the natural sugars in the milk component of the drinks.

I’m thinking that HMG could save a lot more than £45million a year by just firing all the goblins involved in implementing and enforcing all these tax minutiae, but no doubt that might be seen as too simplistic.

Whether control freaks like Bloomberg or unctuous figures like Streeting, they’re all just bastards.