Using vinegar to deice your car windscreen

The last few weeks have really given us the oppor­tun­ity to test out our car dei­cing tech­niques.

One that we neg­lected to men­tion was this one, cour­tesy of Auto­trader. It’s billed as stop-​​gap if you run out of ‘proper’ deicer.

Mix up a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ solu­tion of house­hold vin­egar and water, place in a old plastic bottle with a hole cut in its lid and squeeze lib­er­ally across your car win­dows. Then simply scrape off the res­ult­ing sludge with an ice scraper or (not-​​to-​​be-​​used-​​again-​​for transactional-​​purposes) credit card.

Having tried brown malt vin­egar over the last couple of weeks, we have to say it does leave the glass shiny, albeit with the odd whiff remin­is­cent of fish and chips.

Though def­in­itely no need to add salt.

For more hints and tips for coping with the cold, see Living’s advice on winter driv­ing.

IMAGE image by Flickr user malias

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2007-​​12-​​21 20:02:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Flickr, Glass, Outdoors, Recreation, Salt, Urban Exploration, Vinegar, Water
Posted in Cars | View Comments

How does rain make you feel?

Not con­tent with rain­ing on my parade last week­end, it seems that there’s unsettled weather in store for at least another couple of weeks. Well thanks. Without wish­ing to bleat, my roof still leaks, and rain – which I nor­mally love – has star­ted to depress the hell out of me.

There’s no doubt that summer rain is one of life’s joys, par­tic­u­larly when it comes after a week of balmy sun­shine and a day of crack­ling ten­sion and tower­ing, preg­nant clouds. I’ve had some great times in it; pre­tend­ing to swim in over­flow­ing gut­ters, actu­ally swim­ming in pools, stand­ing in the middle of a field shout­ing “is that the best you can do??” to the heav­ens… you get the idea.

In fact, all the best times have been a little reck­less, now I think about it. So being out­side in summer rain makes me reck­less, and being out in winter rain just makes me cold. Either way I’m never unhappy unless I’m stuck inside; turn­ing on lights, watch­ing it stream down the win­dows, hear­ing it spray from car wheels, and won­der­ing which ceil­ing it’s going to drip through next.

Won­der­ing how it made other people feel, I asked around the Living office. While I was at it, I got people to recom­mend rainy day songs and made them into a playl­ist that Spo­tify users can listen to by click­ing here.

“When it rains, I want the sky to open up with a venge­ful God ready to wash away the sins of the earth with buck­ets of pre­cip­it­a­tion, thun­der and light­ning. A drizzle just will not do.” – Brad (Purple Rain, Prince & No Rain, Blind Melon)

“In gen­eral I hate rain, but if I’m inside and I can see others out­side and its tip­ping it down I enjoy that smug moment.” – Matt (South­ern Flood Blues, Big Bill Broonzy & It’s Rain­ing Men, The Weather Girls)

“If I’m out in it I’m irrit­ated. If I’m indoors and don’t want to go out I’m reflect­ive. If I’m indoors and do want to go out I’m impa­tient (and very bad com­pany).” – Simon M (Novem­ber Rain, Guns ‘n’ Roses & Shel­ter from the Rain, Bob Dylan)

“I hate rain – it ruins hair and shoes and faces and never makes people look sexy like in films.” Jo-​​ann (Let it Rain, Eric Clapton)

“I love the smells you get from green­ery after rain – grass, trees, flowers all seem to exhale after a down­pour. Trop­ical rain is the best – big fat warm droplets that are fun to be out in… one of my best memor­ies of trav­el­ling in Thai­l­and years ago was swim­ming in the sea with the rain pound­ing down on the sur­pris­ingly flat sur­face of the sea. Being in the sea felt warmer than being out on the beach.” – Jeremy (Walk­ing in the Rain, Modern Romance (vetoed because it’s more cheese than rain))

“Being inside with a hot drink and some chocol­ate, some­thing nice to listen to and a good book is the best. Last week when it was storm­ing, it was warm enough to keep the bal­cony doors open in the flat and having the wind whip at the cur­tains made everything seem a bit gothic.” – Car­oline

“Big rain­storms can be really thrill­ing, as long as I can get a view from a snug indoor spot – prefer­ably one that I don’t have to leave in the near future. Drizzle is point­less and irrit­at­ing. There’s some­thing about trop­ical rain that I actu­ally quite enjoy, I guess the drops are warm and fat and far more sat­is­fy­ing. How­ever, I’ve been to Gla­ston­bury enough times to know that rain isn’t always my friend – more mud anyone?” – Laura (Dry The Rain, Beta Band & Blame It On The Weather­man, B*Witched)

“Rain in spring or autumn, par­tic­u­larly overnight, gets me quite excited, because it often brings down migrat­ing birds from the skies. You can then go out and twitch them. Rain at this time of year makes me think: I’m really glad I’ve planned a four-​​night camp­ing hol­i­day with the kids next week. Fant­astic. Thank you. Although I won’t have to water the runner beans this even­ing.” – Charlie

But of course, whatever you think of rain, the trick to making it pass is to find your­self some­thing to do. I star­ted writ­ing this post this morn­ing, since when the clouds have parted, the sun has returned, and – now I come to pub­lish it – the week­end looks an alto­gether more prom­ising pro­spect.

How does rain make you feel? Have you got a favour­ite rain song? Leave a comment!

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2009-​​07-​​24 23:50:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Big Bill Broonzy, Bob Dylan, Earth Sciences, Eric Clapton, Gardens, Precipitation, Rain, Water
Posted in Lifestyle | View Comments