Peter Delaney
GT40s Supporter
A mate of mine is a motor racing photographer & journalist (with a delightful sense of humour), & has been trekking to Goodwood for years. He always sends a few stories to friends & I thought you might enjoy his "before & after" reports of the recent event :
No 1 - Anticipation :
PREPARING FOR PARADISE.
OR
THE TERRIFYING TAILS OF THE (IN)TREPID TRAVELLER.
Evenin all, it’s gloat mail time again.
Sam has once again buggered off to blighty and is preparing, as we speak,
so to speak, to enter heaven & worship at the feet of his (mine) Gods at
Goodwood. As is usually the case the story begins well before departure and is filled with excitement, near misses, non misses and mirth.
As is always the case, the moment I purchased the airline tickets, planes
began to drop with monotonous regularity from the place where they are
supposed to be (ie; above the ground) to where they are most assuredly not. (ie; on, or in some parts, below the ground).
The actual day I was to go and pick up the tickets from the travel agent (Hi Georgie, love your work – more of that later) I bounded from bed with a glad cry, actually more of a scream of agony – nasty cramp in calf, but I
digress, and staggered into the bathroom to have a shower. As is my way I bung on the radio to catch the news of the day & what is the very first
subject reported? Airline crash in the Ukraine. If Osama could bring down as many aircraft with such certainty as I seem to be able to do the travel
industry would grind to a halt in weeks. No point buggering about with
explosives, just get Sam to buy an airline ticket. Don’t even have to use
it. Like last year, bought a ticket, planes crashed ( about 5 in 3 weeks)
Ross tried to kill himself, hot water system committed suicide, so did cars
water pump, didn’t get on plane. Foolproof. Good thing is, at least for me
anyway, not quite so good for those flying before me, is that it all comes
to a halt as soon as I actually get onto the pane.
As usual subscribers will know, there is usually a series of unfortunate
events that occur prior to my departure. It is as if the travel gods must
test my mettle every time to ascertain whether I am worthy of relocation.
The first such event came on the Tuesday, just seven days before taking
flight, when I was in the middle of at least a five car pile-up on the
freeway going to work. ( I am aware that some of you already know this part of the story but others don’t so you will just have to scroll down a bit and stop bitching! God some of you people are impatient.) I was in the process of changing lanes to overtake when everyone in front of me decided to stop for some reason. A reason that will not become apparent. The ute to my front right could not decide quite which direction was going to cause the most carnage and after several changes of mind, sideswiped the car to my front left sending it into the rock wall, changed his mind again and drove head first into the wall on his right. Several cars behind me decided that imitation was indeed the sincerest for of flattery and executed the exactly same maneuver. Me? Well straight up the bloody middle of course. Came out without a scratch. Bit of weaving involved, but that’s only to be expected.
Crap flying everywhere, didn’t hit a thing that I know of. Out the other
side of this carambolage to………nothing. No traffic, no cars, no, well,
nothing. No bloody explanation at all. Should have known that this was a
forewarning of doom to come.
Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, went to get some milk in the morning. On the drive back, heading into such blinding sun that the car in front of me drove straight into the gutter & took off both left hand hubcaps. Me being the silly bugger I am, has a chuckle all the way home, not thinking that karma lay in wait. Two near misses were not going to go unpaid for. Reversed down driveway. Muffler hanging a bit too low. Catches on lip of concrete at the front of garage and tears out the entire exhaust system. Yeah, yeah, very bloody funny Hughie! Was going to put the car into the mechanics on Monday morning anyway for (yep, you guessed it) replacing the exhaust manifold which had a hole in it. Only needed the bloody thing to last another five sodding days. Instead, hire car, $300 down the drain. Still, that fact that just the previous weekend I had been sold an identical BMW 520i for $300 to use as spares on wheels means that the parts will be cheap. Ah well, what goes around, comes around. And smacks you in the back of the fucking head with a sledgehammer.
Arrived at the airport well ahead of time, had a drinkie with Toni,
re-arranged my camera gear & luggage as per new security regs, attempted to use my frequent flyer points to get an upgrade to business class but was turned down, checked in & meandered through to the duty free claims desk. (Had to claim the duty on the monster lens). For those of you that worked at Vendor this will be interesting, for those of you who didn’t, well, just deal with it. Wandered up to the girl at the desk to ask if I was in the right place when she took me by surprise. "Don’t you recognize me?" Errr, nope. Stare at her right tit ( that was where her ID tag was). Bugger me, Rowena Dagelet working for customs. Small world. Spent a bit of time catching up & sauntered off to the Qantas Club for a free drinkie. Got said drinkie & settled down for the long wait until the flight was called. Didn’t realize just how long all this had taken & had to scull said drinkie & do the bolt. Got to the gate & handed over boarding pass and was asked to go to other desk as the boarding pass had to be changed. Machine that printed boarding passes was on the fritz. Waited, waited, waited some more and then waited again. Finally the machine was coaxed into life & it spits out my new pass.
WooHoo… free upgrade to business class all the way over to London. Silly
buggers gave me for free what I had offered to use my frequent flyer points on. Champagne on boarding, Glenlivett single malt scotch, cognac in the coffee, Mr Snape this and Mr Snape that (the hosties have to remember all your names), decent food, a seat you can actually lie down & get some sleep in and express immigration checking at Heathrow. Damn, one could get used to this. Seems that some Qantas Club members had been upgraded as they had oversold the cattle class. As the difference between cattle & bus class is usually about $5000, the $3000 I spent on that life time membership just paid for itself. The free booze in the lounges are from here on in just one big bloody bonus.
Arrived & picked up a rather sporty VW Golf GTi (Nice pair of upgrades
Georgina, thanks babe) with so many electronic do-dads it has taken two days to figure out how to get the boot to open. Still, the sports option
sequential gearbox has been fun to test out. Absolute fang machine. Only
thing so far (apart from the boot issue) is an alarming lack of grunt in
first gear if you are going through a round-about after cruising along for a
while. Seems to need to reconsider if it will actually have any power at
all. First time I thought it had stalled but then in came the power. Best
way to describe it is like a sort of evil turbo lag on a non turbo car.
Weird. Still you do get used to it after a while.
Drove down to Dorchester & booked into a quite ples B&B for the night.
Thought I would go back to the Bovington Tank Museum. Shit! School holidays & ten million brats. Damned place was packed. Went back to town, had a cream tea and went to the pub for a pint of bitter or two. Contrary to all conventional wisdom there are some good restaurants in England. Just not English ones. Had a very good Chinese feed, went back to the digs and crashed at about 8;30. Fifty odd hours on the go will do that for you. Damned fine breakie & off again.
Went to see the ancient "White Horse" on the hill. Followed a builder’s
truck owned by the comfortingly named Crumbleholme Ltd. Passed through the pretty little town of Poxwell. Glad to know they got over it. Not a very
sporting mob though, had signs advising of slow pedestrians. Much more of a challenge to nail the quick ones. Note to self, very disappointing result,
must try harder.
Back to Bovington, no brats, had good look around and hit the road again.
Checked into the regular digs at Emsworth, had a glass or two (well three to be precise) of red while writing this tosh, downloaded 90 odd pics from the camera to the laptop and will now settle down to await my entry to paradise on Friday. Thank Christ for the pommies, for only they could have come up with the Goodwood Revival meeting.
FUSB
Sam Snape
[email protected]
No 1 - Anticipation :
PREPARING FOR PARADISE.
OR
THE TERRIFYING TAILS OF THE (IN)TREPID TRAVELLER.
Evenin all, it’s gloat mail time again.
Sam has once again buggered off to blighty and is preparing, as we speak,
so to speak, to enter heaven & worship at the feet of his (mine) Gods at
Goodwood. As is usually the case the story begins well before departure and is filled with excitement, near misses, non misses and mirth.
As is always the case, the moment I purchased the airline tickets, planes
began to drop with monotonous regularity from the place where they are
supposed to be (ie; above the ground) to where they are most assuredly not. (ie; on, or in some parts, below the ground).
The actual day I was to go and pick up the tickets from the travel agent (Hi Georgie, love your work – more of that later) I bounded from bed with a glad cry, actually more of a scream of agony – nasty cramp in calf, but I
digress, and staggered into the bathroom to have a shower. As is my way I bung on the radio to catch the news of the day & what is the very first
subject reported? Airline crash in the Ukraine. If Osama could bring down as many aircraft with such certainty as I seem to be able to do the travel
industry would grind to a halt in weeks. No point buggering about with
explosives, just get Sam to buy an airline ticket. Don’t even have to use
it. Like last year, bought a ticket, planes crashed ( about 5 in 3 weeks)
Ross tried to kill himself, hot water system committed suicide, so did cars
water pump, didn’t get on plane. Foolproof. Good thing is, at least for me
anyway, not quite so good for those flying before me, is that it all comes
to a halt as soon as I actually get onto the pane.
As usual subscribers will know, there is usually a series of unfortunate
events that occur prior to my departure. It is as if the travel gods must
test my mettle every time to ascertain whether I am worthy of relocation.
The first such event came on the Tuesday, just seven days before taking
flight, when I was in the middle of at least a five car pile-up on the
freeway going to work. ( I am aware that some of you already know this part of the story but others don’t so you will just have to scroll down a bit and stop bitching! God some of you people are impatient.) I was in the process of changing lanes to overtake when everyone in front of me decided to stop for some reason. A reason that will not become apparent. The ute to my front right could not decide quite which direction was going to cause the most carnage and after several changes of mind, sideswiped the car to my front left sending it into the rock wall, changed his mind again and drove head first into the wall on his right. Several cars behind me decided that imitation was indeed the sincerest for of flattery and executed the exactly same maneuver. Me? Well straight up the bloody middle of course. Came out without a scratch. Bit of weaving involved, but that’s only to be expected.
Crap flying everywhere, didn’t hit a thing that I know of. Out the other
side of this carambolage to………nothing. No traffic, no cars, no, well,
nothing. No bloody explanation at all. Should have known that this was a
forewarning of doom to come.
Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, went to get some milk in the morning. On the drive back, heading into such blinding sun that the car in front of me drove straight into the gutter & took off both left hand hubcaps. Me being the silly bugger I am, has a chuckle all the way home, not thinking that karma lay in wait. Two near misses were not going to go unpaid for. Reversed down driveway. Muffler hanging a bit too low. Catches on lip of concrete at the front of garage and tears out the entire exhaust system. Yeah, yeah, very bloody funny Hughie! Was going to put the car into the mechanics on Monday morning anyway for (yep, you guessed it) replacing the exhaust manifold which had a hole in it. Only needed the bloody thing to last another five sodding days. Instead, hire car, $300 down the drain. Still, that fact that just the previous weekend I had been sold an identical BMW 520i for $300 to use as spares on wheels means that the parts will be cheap. Ah well, what goes around, comes around. And smacks you in the back of the fucking head with a sledgehammer.
Arrived at the airport well ahead of time, had a drinkie with Toni,
re-arranged my camera gear & luggage as per new security regs, attempted to use my frequent flyer points to get an upgrade to business class but was turned down, checked in & meandered through to the duty free claims desk. (Had to claim the duty on the monster lens). For those of you that worked at Vendor this will be interesting, for those of you who didn’t, well, just deal with it. Wandered up to the girl at the desk to ask if I was in the right place when she took me by surprise. "Don’t you recognize me?" Errr, nope. Stare at her right tit ( that was where her ID tag was). Bugger me, Rowena Dagelet working for customs. Small world. Spent a bit of time catching up & sauntered off to the Qantas Club for a free drinkie. Got said drinkie & settled down for the long wait until the flight was called. Didn’t realize just how long all this had taken & had to scull said drinkie & do the bolt. Got to the gate & handed over boarding pass and was asked to go to other desk as the boarding pass had to be changed. Machine that printed boarding passes was on the fritz. Waited, waited, waited some more and then waited again. Finally the machine was coaxed into life & it spits out my new pass.
WooHoo… free upgrade to business class all the way over to London. Silly
buggers gave me for free what I had offered to use my frequent flyer points on. Champagne on boarding, Glenlivett single malt scotch, cognac in the coffee, Mr Snape this and Mr Snape that (the hosties have to remember all your names), decent food, a seat you can actually lie down & get some sleep in and express immigration checking at Heathrow. Damn, one could get used to this. Seems that some Qantas Club members had been upgraded as they had oversold the cattle class. As the difference between cattle & bus class is usually about $5000, the $3000 I spent on that life time membership just paid for itself. The free booze in the lounges are from here on in just one big bloody bonus.
Arrived & picked up a rather sporty VW Golf GTi (Nice pair of upgrades
Georgina, thanks babe) with so many electronic do-dads it has taken two days to figure out how to get the boot to open. Still, the sports option
sequential gearbox has been fun to test out. Absolute fang machine. Only
thing so far (apart from the boot issue) is an alarming lack of grunt in
first gear if you are going through a round-about after cruising along for a
while. Seems to need to reconsider if it will actually have any power at
all. First time I thought it had stalled but then in came the power. Best
way to describe it is like a sort of evil turbo lag on a non turbo car.
Weird. Still you do get used to it after a while.
Drove down to Dorchester & booked into a quite ples B&B for the night.
Thought I would go back to the Bovington Tank Museum. Shit! School holidays & ten million brats. Damned place was packed. Went back to town, had a cream tea and went to the pub for a pint of bitter or two. Contrary to all conventional wisdom there are some good restaurants in England. Just not English ones. Had a very good Chinese feed, went back to the digs and crashed at about 8;30. Fifty odd hours on the go will do that for you. Damned fine breakie & off again.
Went to see the ancient "White Horse" on the hill. Followed a builder’s
truck owned by the comfortingly named Crumbleholme Ltd. Passed through the pretty little town of Poxwell. Glad to know they got over it. Not a very
sporting mob though, had signs advising of slow pedestrians. Much more of a challenge to nail the quick ones. Note to self, very disappointing result,
must try harder.
Back to Bovington, no brats, had good look around and hit the road again.
Checked into the regular digs at Emsworth, had a glass or two (well three to be precise) of red while writing this tosh, downloaded 90 odd pics from the camera to the laptop and will now settle down to await my entry to paradise on Friday. Thank Christ for the pommies, for only they could have come up with the Goodwood Revival meeting.
FUSB
Sam Snape
[email protected]
