asthma and wales

Live the Welsh road works and dream of England

(written august 2009)

A few years ago I was on holiday in Wales. At the time I was still living in East Anglia, thus the prospect of hills was a real novelty. Yet when I was on this break in Welsh land I was confronted by a young man whom I presume was both unemployed and suffering from low level brain damage. I was standing next to the car belonging to my girlfriend of the time and I was also sporting a black and white Union Flag tee shirt (often mistakenly referred to as the ‘Union Jack’, but it is only the ‘Jack’ when flying from the jack mast of a ship, enough trivia) albeit a low level affair. The young man in question asked “what the f*** are you doing here?”. My reply was the retort, “I’m seeing what my taxes pay for”

I know that I am being all English and demeaning to the rest of the United Kingdom, yet I feel that I have a point. England is the only country that does not have a bank holiday on its Saint’s day, because most of the money that goes to the government comes from this green and pleasant land and Mr Darling would pass out if he had to stump up the money for everyone in England to have an extra day off.

Nonetheless I have a love for Wales. The Welsh currently builds the V8 engines that power the new Jaguars and have also given us Anthony Hopkins, Tom Jones and the Manic Street Preachers. However, the Welshists also produced Neil Kinnock and John Prescott and sorry, but that is simply unforgivable.

I digress.

On Monday I was required to journey to Wales once again due to my girlfriend needing to go to hospital. I live in Staffordshire, which is deeply unpleasant, and she lives in Cardiff, a city that she describes as lovely, but seeing that she is originally from Belfast I guess that anywhere where she doesn’t get shot at has a nice and warm feel to it.

My Paddy partner had been stopping with me for a few days and we left for Cardiff early in the morning, storming down the motorways of England before the rush hour took effect. There were a few minor hold ups, but nothing untoward until that is we reached Wales. I have always had trouble when driving west of the border, I simply do not understand why it is that the road signs have to be in Welsh as well as English as I find this downright confusing. When I read a sign I only want to see what information it needs to yield and then I can carry on with my journey, that’s it. But in Wales I am left reading the Welsh language section after the English and trying desperately to comprehend how the two phrases are in any way related. Another point that riles me here is that I have never met anyone from Wales who does not speak English, usually with Welsh being a language of national pride. I see nothing wrong with this, I am all for a bit of pride in one’s country, yet there is no need for road signs to appear in the UK in anything other than English. After all English is the language of the civilised world.

And America.

Anyway, as we made our merry way towards Cardiff I became rather agitated with Welsh road works. There were tailbacks and hold ups galore, but nothing, I repeat, nothing prepared me for the mess that greeted us upon arrival in the capital of Wales. Now, we all know how road works are supposed to go. You sit there, bored and frustrated waiting for the lights to change that in turn herald a few cars moving through the aforementioned road works. Not in Cardiff it isn’t.

No, here you sit in traffic that simply does not move, looking towards traffic lights that are apparently jammed on red for the best part of an hour, riding the clutch and sweating profusely, praying tht that the fan will kick in before the radiator explodes and showers the druids with the impossible prospect of coolant heated to a billion degrees centigrade . Then if you blink you miss the lights that flash green for a nanosecond before letting half a million buses through.

After an obscene amount of time I changed lane and decided to adopt the ‘taxi driver’ style of traffic negotiation whereby one simply ignores the lanes and tries to fit through any available gap. This caused a problem however, as the clutch pedal simply went straight to the floor. To say I was upset would be a drastic understatement. I screamed, I wailed and I cursed God, something awkward for an atheist to do. You see, in this moment I had run every possible problem through my head. Anyone who has ever been involved in a road accident will know the way that times slows down and thought processes accelerate faster than a top fuel dragster. My girlfriend was in the car, instructed not to take the medication she relies on because the hospital had told her not to have it that morning, the same medication was buried somewhere in the luggage in the back of the car, my clutch had gone, the road was blocked, therefore there would be no way that an ambulance could read my lady should she need urgent assistance, thus in a few brief seconds I was already planning bereavement and planning a funeral.

To make matters worse my crawling about on the road trying to reattach the clutch cable caused amusement for an Afro Caribbean gentleman in his Peugeot. I do not fully understand the reason why French cars tend to be owned by persons with learning difficulties, but they do. Had I been on my own I imagine that I would have lost my temper and beaten him to death with the jack handle that resides beneath my driver’s seat. This is not a joke.

Once the cable was back where the good men of Dagenham intended I fired the engine up and made my way forwards, realising that the handbrake was causing undue friction and whether the lights were green or not I have no idea, this was a terrifying situation.

Happily things improved, the Cortina lunged through the streets of the Welsh capital and onward to the hospital. Here came a surprise. Once more I found myself swearing owing to the distinct lack of pocket change about my person I thought would be necessary for the car park. Yet, my lovely lady explained that there was no need to pay for the car park. This was yet another shock. During my time going back to the hospital that buggered up my leg I was charged roughly £45 a second to park my car, but in Wales it is free, so that’s something else my taxes are subsidising, the bitterness continues.

I do not wish to divulge what occurred within the walls of the hospital, that is personal, yet I did actually get to meet a real Welsh person. This sounds obvious, but before arriving I had not yet seen a person from the rolling hills and deep valleys of this part of the UK. No, what I had actually seen was countless Portuguese, Polish and Indian people, as well as the African chap in the Pug, and even inside the comfort of my own vehicle the other occupant was from the Emerald Isle.

Nonetheless I can report that the ‘technician’ who saw to my lady was somewhat ‘thick’ and I assume had worked his way up through the NHS from the post of cleaner to operating a machine a child of three would not find complex.

Just a word of advice, if you find yourself in a Welsh hospital and a man called Collin is called in to asses you, simply ask to see the Vietnamese woman that cleans the toilets, it will be easier and more accurate.

Later in the day I dropped my girl off at her flat, situated on a street that Afghans would find a wee bit dodgy (but not to rough as there are plenty of veiled women wandering about) and made my way home thinking only of how quickly I could save the cash so that she could move in with me and headed back towards my home country.

To be honest I still love Wales, but I have no intention of visiting Cardiff unless there is something good on at the Millennium Stadium (paid for by the English) or if Eileen calls me up saying she has bought a job lot of PVC clothing and cannot get to the train station. I was sad to be leaving my lover but happy to be leaving the land of the idiotic road works, blasting along the motorways, thankfully with the signs in the Queen’s English and making good time.

Then I got to the M6 and got stuck for two hours. And guess what was the cause of the hold up? A caravan that had tipped over, complete with the Welsh dragon on the number plate.

---

911

Dan’ll fix it

(written july 2009)

A few weeks ago I had a friend staying at my house. Her name is Eileen, she is from Northern Ireland and she is unwell. I don’t want to go into the intricacies of her medical condition other than saying that she is due into hospital next month for treatment that is going to be less than pleasant.

Therefore I wanted her to fulfil one of her ambitions during her short stay, something which would also fulfil an ambition of mine, an ambition I have sough to achieve since I was 8 years old, thus providing a shared experience for my paddy mate and myself.

As with all close friendships we have a number of similar interests, ranging from films, television and music, but importantly we are both massive petrol heads. Here an explanation is required of a Saturday morning back in 1986 when I first came into contact with what, to me, is the God of all cars. As a boy growing up in the eighties there were basically 2 posters that could take pride of place on the bedroom wall. The first was a Lamborghini Countach with the doors open and the second was a Porsche 911. I was in the latter group. The Porsche motor company rather thoughtfully chose to put a dealership a few miles from the family home and my dear father agreed after much stropping on my part to take me there. Despite being a forklift driver, as well as being the proud owner of a Fiat Strada he was able to convince the salesman that he was looking for a Carrera and had brought his young lad along because I was smitten with the beetle on steroids. I can still remember the car I sat in as if it was yesterday. Actually, I can remember it as if this very morning I was in my transformers tee shirt with a carton of Kiaora in my grubby mitt.

It was a 911 Targa in Guard’s red with black wheels and black leather interior. Leather at this point was totally new to me, aside from my father’s motorcycle jacket which didn’t smell the same and I had not even sat on a sofa made from a dead cow. From that fateful day I was convinced that the best car in the world was a 911, not the fastest, not the most practical, yet if a vehicle is required for going from place to place with the ability to sit in traffic or cover hundreds of miles at breakneck speeds then this would be the tool of choice.

Eileen is also a dedicated Porsche fan and she desperately wanted to drive the rear engined colossus for herself. However, this presented a problem as, typifying the Irish stereotypes, her driving experiences all lacked the tedious issue of passing a driving test. Unperturbed I wanted her to get behind the wheel, although she was prepared to settle for riding in the passenger seat which would be far easier. Over the years I have developed a fine tuned ability to lie to salesmen, possibly inherited from my father but also coupled with my absolute loathing for the brown nosing that salespeople carry out if they think they have an opportunity to earn their commission. I don’t blame them, yet this is what has lead to the global recession that everyone with a job is now paying for.

Telephone calls were made and I located a Carrera 2 convertible for sale a mere 20 miles from my abode, bullshit was exchanged and a test drive was booked for the Saturday afternoon. On the said afternoon I was tearing along the M6 with my best buddy ensconced in the passenger seat as we headed towards an appointment with the mighty Porsche. Upon arrival the seller had things planned perfectly. Generally I have unfathomable loathing towards anyone involved in sales, yet this guy was a real professional as everything was so blatantly set up to present the car as a piece of motoring artwork had been organised to make my friend and myself go ‘ooh’ and ‘aahhh’. For example, as the Cortina drew to a halt a large sliding wooden door began to slide back revealing the Carrera like a prize on a game show. Sunlight streamed in through the opening door and glinted off the silver paintwork, across the sculptured curves of the bonnet, back towards the windscreen and over the bulging rear wheel arches.

The chat began and pleasantries were exchanged for a full quarter of an hour before the salesman opened the doors and pressed the switch that makes the roof fold down. For me this was an impressive display of engineering that only the Germans can muster. For Eileen things were different. She was there grinning like a schoolgirl and bouncing up and down in that way that means that women do leading to every man within a square mile to stare fixedly at her chest regions. Coming from Belfast I realised that she must have seen many cars without roofs before, but rather than pressing a switch, on the Emerald Isle cars become roofless when a man in a balaclava leaves some plastic explosives under the driver’s seat.

Her smile grew broader still after the salesman had defied the laws of science and squeezed himself into the back seat, Eileen clambered into the passenger seat and I tried to contain my excitement getting behind the wheel, parking my posterior on the flawless black leather sports seat and trying to adjust the seat. Here came the first problem, as I had absolutely no idea how to make myself comfortable, thus I stabbed away at the buttons next to the seat with realising that I was pressing the memory position type thing. Now, I have no idea who the previous owner was, yet I suspect that he was employed making chocolate for Mr Wonka because I found myself pinned to the dashboard, unable to reach the buttons that had thrust me into the steering wheel and desperately trying to appear that I had intentionally made a hash of the seating arrangement. After a few moments I was able to reach another set of buttons and settled back, fingers poised on the ignition key waiting to fire up the flat six.

As a petrol head I am captivated by the sound of the internal combustion engine, and the Porsche is one of the best noises ever made. I have heard many 911’s drive past over the years, but I was nowhere near prepared for the explosion that spat from the exhausts. This car sounded angry, ready to kill Eileen, the salesman and myself if I made the slightest mistake. I should have felt afraid, but instead I pulled the car gently onto the road, looked for a clearing in the traffic and floored the throttle. Rather than spinning wildly in circles, the Porsche surged forward happily and propelled all inside towards the horizon.

So here I was living a childhood dream, revelling in the experience and trying to work out what the good and bad points are with the rear engined menace. Well, as far as I could tell the faults were that the steering was a bit light and, actually that’s it.

Everything else was as I expected. Close, precise engineering, perfect lines and genuine everyday usability.

I could harp on four hours about driving the 911, but the real highlight came when the sales chap asked politely if ‘we’ (Eileen and myself) shared the driving. Thus it came to pass that I pulled over on an industrial estate so that my Irish mate could have a drive. As previously mentioned she does not possess a licence, but on a quiet dead end road at the weekend then this should not have posed a problem.

With a smile so wide her head was in danger of splitting we swapped seats and she set about adjusting the seat, with no problems unlike myself, and got herself comfortable. As a woman she has the inbuilt need to get as close to the wheel as possible, to the point where her airbags are pressed against the car’s airbag and the sun visor could be used as a headrest. No matter, she was off, jerkily to start with and then opening the engine up, laughing and truly happy, whilst I explained that her slight lack of clutch control was due to her not having driven in a while. Several years in fact, but he didn’t need to know any further details.

Also, as a female Eileen also managed to take a wrong turn and piloted the Carrera through a village, still smiling whilst I murmured a prayer under my breath and enjoyed herself hugely. A few miles passed, I got back in the driving seat, again buggering up the seat position controls, and began to head back to the dealer’s. knowing that the shared joy of ragging a 911 about was close to an end I sought somewhere to overtake and gave the Stuttgart barnstormer the beans, foot down in second, then third, then fourth and short shifting into sixth when I got back onto the correct side of the road the speedo was well into triple figures. I was happy, Eileen was happy and the salesman was pretending to be happy, all was nice and rosy.

Parking the Porsche back at the dealership I felt glad to have driven the dream, glad that my Paddy buddy had also had a good thrash and also desperately trying to think of an excuse to get away before I was asked to purchase the car.

Eventually we got away, clambered back into the trusty old Ford and set off back towards my house, talking all the way about how the Porsche had met our expectations, laughing at how convincingly we had passed ourselves off as a couple and looking for any security vans we might hijack to get enough money to get a Carrera for real.

But this is not where the story ends. As it happens a week after Eileen had departed, the day after the test drive we no longer had to pretend to be a couple. After a long chat on the phone we realised that we both wanted to be more than just friends.

So there you go. I have the pretty young girlfriend, the bald spot and I am thinking of buying some leather trousers. All I need to complete the picture is a bloody Porsche!

no more heroes

No more heroes anymore

(written april 2009)

Over the weekend I had a new experience. Once again I was dragged over to friends of my present girlfriend, something I do not wholly enjoy as I am the oldest person there, something that causes endless hilarity, and also because the couple in question always demand payment for services rendered. Imagine visiting friends on a Sunday afternoon and then being asked to pay for half the meal, after you have spent a few hours being reminded that there are a few grey hairs on your head.

However, this time events took a new course and I have been able to earn respect from the younger generation. After an expensive Sunday lunch the male half of the young couple thought it would be fun for us all to play on the newest game he has for his games console. Usually I deplore this type of thing, I am happy with a game on the Wiicubestation after several hours of enthusiastic drinking, but not a three in the afternoon when the sun is shining and there is fuel in the car.

The game in question is Guitar Hero; Metallica Edition. Here my interest came to life. Had I been wrong about this young fellow all this time? Was he also a fan of proper music, played with instruments, with words that even those in our thirties can understand? No he wasn’t. it transpired that he had bought the game on the recommendation of a gamers magazine, so he had leapt into his front wheel drive car and headed for the town centre. In his defence, the whipper snapper had also bought a copy of The Black Album to try and understand what the fuss was about.

Maybe there was some hope here, he might have heard it and been converted from the modern electric tripe that fills the charts in the modern world, yet he had listened to it once and described it as ‘alright’.

Alright? Now I am bloody sorry to have to say this, but the black album, also known as the snake album, is not alright, it is one of the best albums ever recorded. Anyone with an insight into guitar based rock had a copy, in fact if you were to survive a plane crash in a remote African desert, then it’s fair bet that some of the hitherto undiscovered tribesmen that came to your rescue would have a copy of the black album in their charming mud huts.

I was raised on many types of music, yet from the age where I was able to hold a tennis racket the wrong way up I have always loved music involving men with long hair and tattoos playing very loudly through Marshall amplifiers whilst ingesting quantities of drugs that would bring down every elephant in existence.

My early tastes were mainly from bands hailing from the Midlands in the early seventies. That most of the music that shaped a generation came from the Birmingham area is no mystery, they were all on strike and had nothing better to do than come up with many of the best tunes ever recorded. The Americans had not yet caught up at this point due to their misguided campaign in Vietnam. Fair enough they had ‘the doors’ and ‘Hendrix’ and all credit is due here, but I still maintain that the best music of the era came from England.

I remember when in 1982 my uncle came to dinner one evening complete with his latest purchase. It was an album called the Ace of Spades by Motorhead and if there was any defining moment where I became a ‘rocker’ than this was it. The fist single I purchased was the Clairvoyant by Iron Maiden and the first new fangled CD that came into my collection was Led Zeppelin IV, maybe the best album of all time.

Over the years my musical tastes have become more eclectic, but mostly my collection is centred around between three and five men, complete with long hair and tattoos belting out 12 bar blues through distortion pedals and shouting at a microphone. I can tell by ear what make of guitar is being used on each track and have a deep mistrust for anybody that cannot hear the difference between a Fender and a Gibson.

So as the young man was lifting up the plastic pretend guitar and preparing to amaze me with his skill at miming along to America’s finest ever metal band I will admit that I felt very happy. No matter how much he had been practicing, no matter how close he got to where the chords should have been on a stringless mock up of an ‘axe’, I was going to be much better. Not just better, I was going to blow him into next week with my skill.

He began with the opening track on the black album, and did a fair job of putting his hands in the right place. Then he did the same with a few more songs from the album before asking if the ‘old man’ wanted a go. I did and I went as far as asking that the song I wanted to play was Master of Puppets. He looked at me as if I were insane, that was in the advanced section, I knew it was but that was what I wanted to try, indulge an old man. Call me petty, but I will swear blind that there was a snigger as I lifted the ridiculously light toy over my shoulder.

The song started, as did I, hitting every note with perfect timing and continuing through the solo all the way to the last bars of the song, where the silicon brain controlling everything said that I was ‘Awesome’, a surprise as in all my 31 years I have never been awesome.

My shiny toothed nemesis was struck dumb, after a short pause he regained his use of his voice and asked whether I had played the game before. I hadn’t, instead I spent large amount of my teenage years locked in my bedroom with an electric guitar and a music book. I have never been that good, and will never earn a penny from all my efforts, but I don’t care. It was a great time and I loved going to watch bands and ‘jam’ with other musicians. And demonstrating that the gaming generation have no clue about what a real guitarist can do, even when it’s just miming along with a video game gives me a smug and warm feeling.

One further point came my way after the aforementioned laddie went on to confidently inform me that his favourite rock song was Kashmir by Queen. Here I laughed quite openly at him, mainly because I was sat there in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and put him straight. Kashmir is not by Queen it is a classic Zep song (Physical Graffiti, 1975, track 6 if you’re interested).

Yet here is the problem. When times where hard in the seventies the young men of Britain were turning out truly fantastic music. In the recession of 2009 all the potential talent is pretending to play guitars rather than actually buying a second hand stratocaster, and writing something for themselves.

Some of my heroes are the men that wrote the contents of my MP3 player, but to the new generation the guitar is just something that is used to play along with a video game, and even the bands that recorded the tracks in the first place are now just sprites that dance along on the tv. It makes me sad, no sick that the best albums ever to be recorded are probably already on the shelves.

The comparison between playing a computer game and doing the real thing cannot be measured. I have flown a Spitfire against the Luftwaffe over Southern England on my laptop, but I doubt that the RAF are thinking of calling me up when we have a few more Eurofighters. I may also find myself in trouble if I start stealing cars and shooting prostitutes in a Grand Theft Auto fashion.

But I can remember the days when I was there, complete with my former long hair and various heavy metal attire, head down and knocking riffs out of my Fender. I wasn’t very good, yet to the internet generation I am an ‘expert’.

In 1977 I was not yet born, but I was in the process of getting ready for it. The Stranglers asked “Whatever happened to those heroes?”. Well now I know, they are all playing on computer games, pretending to be musicians rather than learning how to play and maybe writing the next Stairway to Heaven.

No more heroes anymore…

Rolls in the couintry

Rolls in the country

With the classic car show season well underway this weekend my girlfriend and I went to the Burland Hall show, an event organised to raise money for a local hospice. Good stuff, top hole and all that.
I love old cars, old bikes, new cars and new bikes, basically anything with an engine this side of a tractor, so partaking in anything that combines classic motoring with the fight against cancer can only be a good thing. Or so I thought. and this my dear reader brings me to my latest rant... the classic car owners' club.

Two weeks before the Burland show I was at the Crewe and Nantwich show. This small show, only in its' second year was a real laugh. The cars came in all shapes and sizes from concourse condition to those held together with rust and powered by the prayers of the owner. Nonetheless I anticipated no snobbery, but made a point of avoiding the MG Owners club. In the past I have learned that MG drivers on their own are fine, but groups of them have a dangerous crowd mentality whereby they claim to be the demi-gods of the classic car fraternity and pour scorn on all others. However, at the Crewe show I got chatting to the Triumph owners' club, or more accurately the president. I could have pointed out that Britain is a Morarchy led country so maybe he should be the Prime Minister but I didn't get the chance.
The President's opening barrage of fire was, and I quote;
"The Cortina was the biggest heap of shit ever made, you should do yourself a favour and scrap it" This seemed a less than friendly opening to the conversation and I rallied with the fact that I use my 'tina every day and although it breaks down every now and again, I can usually get it going in a couple of minutes. Added to this that the Cortina sold over 7 million units and was the best selling car in the UK for many years, maybe captain Triumph had got it wrong?
Unabashed he continued that if I was hell bent on keeping my Ford then I could improve it by fitting the engine from a Spitfire. For those not in the know on Triumphs of old, the Spitfire was a very pretty little sports car, based on the Herald with a different body and an extra carb. Yet it was backward even for its' time and the idea that I should remove the 'pinto' from my car and replace it with a wheezey old pushrod lump made no sense.

Actually, maybe I misunderstood him, maybe he meant an actual spitfire engine? Although I feel that trying to fit a 27 litre supercharged V12 Merlin might prove tricky, and running it past the insurance company could be problematic. But I do like the thought that if I were asked if there were any other modifications I could say I was thinking of fitting 6 Browning machine guns and a pair of .50 cal armour piercing cannons.
Still, this encounter got me thinking, it isn't the cars that are the problem, nor really is it the people that own them, it is the 'single make' owners' club. To understand this phenomonon further I drew on my limited knowedge of sport, namely football supporters. Like those who watch a game where overpaid, mentally sub-normal men kick a ball around a field there is a sense of commeradery, and with it comes the clothing. Footballists wear t-shirts and hats proclaiming their loyalty to their team, and the same applies to the owners' club. Also the 'mine's better than yours' attitude prevails, even when it is abundently clear that this is not the case, the case in point being replacing one of the most popular engines ever made with a leaky old crap case from a car company which ceased trading in the seventies.
Therefore as the Cortina rolled onto the grounds of Burland Hall on a sunny Sunday afternoon I was prepared for some mild idiocy.

The show was run on the usual poorly organised 'park it where you like' layout and my Crusader was marooned between a Standard Vanguard and a 1959 Bentley. As is the etiquette with these events I nodded to the drivers of both vehicles and was met with a cheery wave from the Standard and .... nothing... not anything at all from the Bentley driver.
At first I assumed that he had not seen me, so after alighting from the car I endevoured to say hello, yet this was also met with silence. The same was not true of his good lady wife who braved my peasant like greeting by making eye-contact and then breaking it with a swift swish of her nose. Next the Bentely driver decided to declare the field for the empire by planting a 15 foot flag pole in the ground and running up the Union Flag. Had we been in India or the West Indies in the 17th Century then maybe there would have been a smattering of logic, but we were in Cheshire, the North West of England and, as far as I am aware, one of the many places in Brittania where we are all too well aware that the queen reigns supreme and we don't like Johhny Bloody Foereigner. Naturally this didn't go down too well with my lovely lady, coming as she does from Northern Ireland the Union Flag evokes memories of what are laughingly known as 'the troubles' or to the rest on the world, a campaign of murder and terrorism perpetated by unemployed idiots with nothing better to do than wage war on what is essentially two stands of the same religion. Oh well, at least the Middle East is continuing the tradition.

As the morning rolled on (rolled, rolls royce, oh I crack myself up) many more members of the Rolls Royce and Bentely Motors Owners' club arrived. Now, before I go on I should make clear that I adore these cars. They hark back to the days when we could still hold our heads high, safe in the knowledge that 'the English are the best at everything' (Lord of the Flies) and we gave that Austrian upstart a damn good thrashing.

However, whilst walking through the assembled Rollers and Bentleys it transpired that the attitude of the '59 owner prevailed throuhout all of those who had brought Derby and Crewe's finest along to the show.

There was no possibility of engagement in conversation with anyone who was not one of the club, overheard conversations spoke of the majesty of their horseless carriages and all other motor cars were inferior, added to this the incredible racism of the average Turbo R driver left me bewildered, after all, in polite society we do not talk openly about 'wogs and darkies', no we make damn sure that no one else is listening!

After a couple of hours my girlfriend retired to the Cortina as I set off with my camera to make another facebook album and thus it was that I used the marvelous technology on my mobile telephone to find out the value of the massive cars used by the aforementioned club.

Before going on I should make clear that there is a definate reason for the Rolls Royce and Bentley owners' club being one and the same. You see for several decades they were the same company. If you wanted a Rolls Royce you bought a gigantic, overpriced car that was luxurious and not that well built. And if you wanted a Bentley you bought a gigantic, overpriced car that was luxuriuos and not that well built with stiffer suspension and a turbocharger nailed to the exhuast manifold.

I digress, what it boils down to is this, new Rollers and Bentleys are hugeley expensive and arguably the best cars money can buy, you can't include supercars because they need servicing every 2 miles and the Maybach is a streched Mercedes S-class that has been covered with prit stick and driven through Halfords, and then through a cut-price electronics retailer. Ture classics like the Phantom II of the 30's and the Silver Ghost are never seen at local car shows because the owners are either too rich to venture amoungst the proleteriate or have messed up on their expenses claims and are on their way to Mexico.

So, the value of the cars at the show were as follows; The top line cars would fetch in the region of 35k. A huge amount of money, yet to keep things in perspective this is roughly the price of a mid-range BMW 5-series, the type of car driven by a bloke called Barry who is a regional sales manager, selling TFT monitors in South Wales, and at the bottom end of the scale came the Silver Spirit drivers.

Everyone knows these cars, they are commonly seen at weddings, painted white and will only start when confetti is thrown at them. They began life in the service of the Marquis of somewhere and over the years have made their way down the social scale until they are owned by a bitter man in his 60's with ideas above his station.
The cost of a Silver Spirit (although oddly enough given the racist attitude of the owners they have the initials 'SS') ranges from 12k for a good 'un all the way down to one that was on ebay for four thousand pounds, but open to offers. This car was described as having a 'knocky bottom end', oh yeah I'd love to rebuild that.

Ergo, owning a knackered old Roller does not make you Lord and Master of all you survey. I would have taken this up with them but sadly they were not willing to talk with commoners.

This is unfortunate, because as I said at the beginning, I adore old motors. I would have mentioned this to the Classic Ford Owners' Club, but seeing that I have given up smoking and have no interest in football they are likely to shun me as well.

Should I sell my Cortina and relinquish all ideas of classic motoring? No, when the day was drawing to a close I lay half asleep in my reclined driver's seat whereupon a jolly fellow knocked on the window, awaking me from my slumber and said;
"Cortina.... fooking great mate"

I rest my case