Commuters are used to car and bike horns blaring wildly as they wind their way through Hamilton’s traffic-heavy streets each weekday morning.

But the usual rush hour cacophony was slightly louder on Thursday.

Hector — normally a placid, happy-go-lucky driver not inclined to bouts of road rage — was jolted out of his early morning lethargy by the near constant tooting from a car behind.

At first, he assumed the boisterous man at the wheel was just incredibly popular; loudly greeting friend after friend after friend after friend as he eased his vehicle off Front Street and up Queen Street.

When the din continued, however, Hector began to brace himself for the slamming of car doors and sharp exchange of words between the horn-happy driver and whichever motorist had irked him.

Then, with no sign of the hullabaloo subsiding, Hector started to worry whether the warning was actually an attempt to grab his attention. Had the back wheel of his bike dropped off? Was an unsuspecting pedestrian hanging on to his basket?

He turned around to see what the hoo-ha was all about — only to find the culprit frantically pulling at the centre of his steeling wheel.

“My horn’s jammed,” he apologetically told bemused bystanders, as he tried to master that rare juggling feat of navigating his car through bumper to bumper traffic while trying to fix the problem.

“Don’t use it so often then,” one wise-cracking pedestrian was heard to shout back.Hector received another shock this week when he opened his bank statement and found he had been charged more than $100 by a pizza firm — for three payments on the same day.

Now a hungry Hector enjoys an Upper Crust pizza as much as the next man. But with only two mouths to feed in his house he was left wondering how he managed to eat at least five 14-inch pizzas in one day...and not remember anything about a display of gluttony that would surely have shamed Homer Simpson.

A quick call to the bank revealed that the pizza outlet’s credit card payment system suffered a few bouts of indigestion in May. So Hector was being billed for three separate payments made earlier in the year, and he was not experiencing a rare strain of food amnesia.Looking ahead to Cup Match, Hector was pleased to see entrepreneurial spirit thriving with a new range of T-shirts marking this year’s eagerly anticipated contest between Somerset and St. George’s.

Although with the recent wave of gun violence on the Island, some people might have been stumped to see an advert for the tops bearing the logo ‘The Battle Continues’. The Somerset shirt features a cowboy-type character in a Stetson brandishing a pistol, while the St. George’s line appears to show a Native American Indian clutching a tomahawk. All of which Hector hopes would be picked up by the metal detectors on the gate.Continuing the cricket theme, Hector was amused to read about a team in the UK that lost a game without anyone scoring a run — a record that makes Bermuda’s defeat in Antigua look positively stellar. Statisticians are now hurriedly checking record books to see if Goldsborough Seconds’ er ... performance ... against local rivals Dishforth is the worst ever recorded.

The team scored a total of five in the clash played in Yorkshire — but all the runs were extras and none of the batsmen troubled the scorers. The team has blamed a “very, very dodgy wicket” for the embarrassing collapse, which produced 10 ducks and a nought not out. But at least it was over quickly. While Bermuda’s ‘Atrocity in Antigua’ might also have been brief, delays plaguing the travelling team in both directions added insult to injury. A charter flight to the Island takes just over two hours, but with the Texan billionaire who ran the tournament choosing not to dig deep into his pockets, the team were forced to take the 15-hour route via Philadelphia and San Juan. Salt was rubbed into the wound on the journey down when, already a good six hours into their day, passengers on the flight from Philly to San Juan were informed that ‘to avoid bad weather, the plane will be diverting in the direction of Bermuda for a smoother flight’.

On the way back, things didn’t get much better. Having not only been trounced by the Jamaicans, the television commentators had felt the need to make repeated references about the players’ sizes and weights.

Despite the commentators’ harsh words the demoralised team headed straight for McDonalds on the way back, presumably for comfort food. Ironically the only person who chose salad for supper was Hector’s colleague travelling with them — and you won’t see him shoehorned into national team kit for the World Cup.It is clear that the Cable & Wireless proposal to buy KeyTech has rubbed some on the Island the wrong way, but it appears that the possible sale of the company, which owns BTC, will make no difference to some of its employees.

Last week, Hector needed to call KeyTech. Not having one of the new phonebooks on hand, he called 411 and clearly stated his listing request as “KeyTech”. A live operator got on the line and asked him to repeat his request . He did, but she asked him to repeat it again. Hector took a deep breath and enunciated, “KEE-TEK, I’m trying to reach your employer, KeyTech.” The still bewildered BTC operator responded: “Can you spell it?”