Would have been very difficult for Nicola and I to have had a nicer Valentine’s Day yesterday.

We got each other a big ‘cute’ card and a smaller ‘proper’ card. She bought me a puppy dog teddy that also says ‘love you loads’ when press its paw, that she made (and recorded) herself at the Build-a-Bear Workshop in Solihull, big choccy heart from Thorntons and a few other bits. I got her a lovely Eeyore teddy with pink hearts, posh sweets and chocs, Murano glass heart necklace and other bits too. I also ordered flowers to be delivered from Next flowers which she loved, they were truly beautiful.

In the evening I took her to a stunning country pub & restaurant, The Golden Lion in Easenhall, Warwickshire, for our evening meal. Four courses in a great location, old fashioned 16th century building, stylish tasty meal and top service, we will definitely go there again to eat.

After that we curled up with Lily O’Briens chocolates (desserts selection), a bottle of champagne and we watched Miss Potter. Just perfect.

The flowers I got for her (and a balloon):

The puppy teddy she got me (for when we are apart):

Both of us getting ready to go out for our meal:

Had it for over a week now, here are some pics of my beautiful little Renault Megane.

So glad I chose this it’s really niceto drive. All gadgety too, including such delights as… handsfree keyless with button starter (can open it, drive it and lock it without even touching the key card), headlights turn themselves on when needed, wipers are sensitive to the rain and adjust wipe timing and speed accordingly (with auto rear wipe when in reverse), climate control with super demister and 8 general fan speeds, set to desired temperature, nice information displays and trip computer, plenty of cubby holes, strange aircraft-throttle style handbrake, nice bright partial-leather interior, quiet and smooth ride, 205/55 R16 alloys, metallic Ink Blue paintwork, all electric windows and front fogs.

That beautiful ass:

Front of the car:

Parked up at night, lit up:

Interior, daytime (from rear seats):

Interior, daytime (from near side)

Driver’s door:

Centre dash audio, clock and outside temperature display:

Main dashboard cluster, daytime:

main dashboard panel, night time:

Interior, night time (from off side):

Megane badge on boot; alloy wheel:

Centre dash climate control, audio, etc; lighting stalk:

Start/stop button; rear light (offside) cluster:

By the way, my lovely Nicola has christened this car Jemima!

Here’s the new music player for the car. Decided to upgrade, and it’s a treat for the car for behaving well this year.

Decided to get an Alpine iDA-X001 from Elliotts in Coventry and it’s a lovely bit of kit. This unit has no built in CD player, it must be one of the first, if not the first, unit with no moving parts inside. As it comes it has the usual RDS radio tuner (FM/MW/LW) but in addition is the main feature; it’s fully iPod compatible.

A USB comes out the rear which plugs into 5th generation iPods and also certain Nanos I think (other iPods can be used with a different cable not included). The beauty of this is flawless control and browsing, top sound reproduction (bypasses iPod’s DAC for Alpine’s own), the ability to display album art and also charges the iPod at the same time. I’m going to get nother iPod and leave one exclusively for car use. The iPod fits nicely into a car cassette holder and can be safely stowed there permanently.

Also a standard USB memory stick can be used (although without fancy album art), and a CD changer is available as an accessory. The faceplate detaches, as they all do, but is only about two-thirds of the normal size, handy for carrying around. The illumination can be red or blue, although as the 6 grid buttons are actually transparent blue, with red light shining through in some light seem purple, which matches my car. Bonus.

Sound tuning is simple (Kenwood had a myriad of audio tweaks!) yet sounds amazing, well as good as the standard speakers will allow. Menu and navigation is good (apart from the search/enter buttons should be the other way around, read the review linked at the end to see what I mean). Various wallpapers can be set with others downloaded from Alpine website, a nice touch.

One thing was that the dimmer cable isn’t attached on this (my JVC and Kenwood were pre-wired) so I had to plug the loose cable into the spare ISO socket. That meant buying a spare ISO connector from Halfords at a silly cost, take the orange wire out of that and put it in mine, simple to do. So now when I put my headlights on the unit dims (3 levels), making night driver better.

And now for some pretty pictures:

1: Simple install on my centre dashboard. 2: Ipod sitting in the armrest cassette holder.

3: Main panel lit. 4: Alternate blue illumination. 5: With main panel removed.

6: Clock-view mode. 7: Main menu front screen. 8: iPod album selection screen.

9: Radio title-view mode. 10: iPod main-view mode. 11: Main panel detached (size compared to payment card).

12: Illuminated at night (before dimmer-wire connected). 13: A home-made faceplate protection case (Police sunglasses case and spare Alpine sticker, I’ll make a smaller one sometime).

Links: (new windows)

Alpine product page (UK) / Alpine product page (US) / ZDnet Review

My grandparents’ new dog. Isn’t he lovely!