STOP.

Hello, it really has been a very long time hasn’t it?

I’ve been off doing things with a camera you see,  http://flic.kr/ps/EFAKs , but like all things it has to co-exist with life and responsibilities. It’s a fun distraction and challenges me to find new and interesting things. Sometimes inspiration is in short supply, other times inspiration is available in buckets full and time is unavailable.

We have to juggle so much in our lives that so often something has to give. Sometimes we get so hung up on our careers, family, friends etc that we miss what’s right under our noses. We have to take time to stop and take a look around. Find the Ferris Bueller within... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-P6p86px6U

Well OK, we can’t really do all of that, because that was Hollywood and more than a little bit silly. But who at some time hasn’t wished that they could just take time out and do something just for themselves.

I used to work with a guy who a couple of times a year would take himself off for a couple of days, telling his family that he was travelling for work. Actually he would be in a bed and breakfast on the coast and spend the days sitting on the beach, drinking coffee, reading the paper or having a quiet beer. Terribly dishonest, but I can see why he did it.

For many years now, I’ve lived with depression. I don’t hide it, but it does tend to be a conversation killer, so I don’t mention it much. It is referred to as a black dog, a faithful constant companion. Over the years it has given me cause to stop and have a look at myself on many occasions. I recognise the need to take time out for myself, have a “me” day. But I have found that it doesn’t always mean having to take a day out.

We can all afford a few minutes each day to stop and have a look around. If we take just those few moments to be with ourselves and think about what we are doing and where we are going, perhaps we’ll get a clear picture.

We don’t need to run around wrecking our best mate’s dad’s Ferrari or dancing in a parade in Manhattan...

...but it would be fun, wouldn’t it?

History, Heroes and Hats

Farnham, a small town on the border of Surrey and Hampshire is a place steeped in history. It is an old market town on the A31 Winchester - Guildford Road. There is a delightful mix of architecture both ancient and modern. Above the town sits the 12th Century Farnham Castle Keep, with magnificent views across the North Downs. In the town itself a plethora of pubs and streets names stand as testament to it's brewing past.

Farnham was also home to Mike Hawthorn who in 1958 became the first British Formula One World Champion. Sadly in the winter of the following year he died when he crashed his Jaguar on the Guildford by-pass. One of the first on the scene was his friend, race team owner, Rob Walker. (www.mike-hawthorn.org.uk)
There are many homages to Mike in and around Farnham, including a street named after him and a car sales garage bearing his name.

I had a wedding there last week. First I had to take the Bride Groom and his two best men to the church. The place in question is located behind a supermarket, at the back of a large public car park. Having dropped them off, I had to high tail it to the other side of the town to collect the bridesmaids before returning to the same house to collect the bride.

There's something very special about driving a vintage Rolls Royce through the streets of such an historic town, particularly one with such motoring heritage. Certainly we turned many heads on our six trips along the high street over the course of the day.

As I dropped the bride at the church, I was informed by the photographer that after the ceremony there would be a wait of around an hour so that a small reception could be held for those not moving on to the Wedding Breakfast. Turning this to my advantage, I took some time to stroll through the lanes and explore this beautiful town.

To my delight I happened upon an outdoor pursuits clothing shop, and spent a while in there trying on all manner of hats. While I was looking at my reflection in a mirror wearing a Panama Fedora at a jaunty angle a sales man appeared, which startled me somewhat. To his credit he just checked with me that I had all I wanted and disappeared upstairs to his customer who was busy trying out all manner of fly-fishing gear.

After returning to the Royce I whiled away a little more time watching the Formula One Qualifying sessions from Germany on my laptop. Something of a juxstaposition in a 1934 car. In fact when someone stuck their head in the window and asked if wireless networking was an option in that model of car, I was briefly floored.

Finally we left for the reception at The Farnham House Hotel. I could have driven a short route, but elected instead to go through the town one last time. The sun shone, people waved and clapped at the happy couple. I hope it made a special moment for them.

On my way home I drove along the Guildford by-pass. As often happens when I drive that section of road my mind wandered to the events of 22nd January 1959. Mike Hawthorn died eight years before I was born, but, thanks to the people of Farnham and old racers his story and reputation will live on.

Well Did You Ever?

Some stories you just can't make up...

I read the jobsheet in my email  inbox with some delight. The pick up was a 10 minute drive from our base, the church was just 5 minutes from the pick up and the reception was just another 10 to 15 minutes from the church. Even the prospect of having to do two runs to the church was of no consequence with this job.

However, still mindful of how my last "easy" job had worked out (see "Working the Problem" below) I wasn't counting my chickens just yet.

I had been given a very detailed itinerary, detailing my movements. The first item was to wait while photographs were taken of the bridal party outside their flat and then take "The Boys" to the church.

Had the skies darkened and lightening bolts split trees while I looked on at the group assembled for photographs I wouldn't have been in the slightest bit surprised.

 The chief bridesmaid wore a dress of black lace, replete with long gloves and black patent boots. The "boys", who were clearly sons of the bride, wore full morning suits and carried canes. Their long black hair flowed from beneath their tops hats like the manes of Victorian funeral horses. I helped "The Boys" into the car and introduced myself to them, their lack of English finalised my suspicion that they are not of these shores.

Having dropped "The Boys" at  the church and returned for the Bride, who I had deduced was their mother. She was ready to go and immediately jumped into the car with her attendants. This was unfortunately against the carefully laid out itinerary, meaning that we now had over 15 minutes to complete a 3 minute journey. Now, a 1935 Rolls Royce will never break a land speed record, but there is a limit to how slowly it can be made to go.

We rocked up at the church with still 5 minutes to go. I opened the rear door to explain that there was no rush, to be greeted by three fairly keen ladies coming my way with considerable momentum. I did the honourable thing and stood back to allow them to continue their charge.

While my charges were busy exchanging their vows I tidied the back of the car, paying particular attention to the squashed cigarette ends that had been trodden in on the bottom of the ladies shoes.

Having tidied the car, I set about opening the package containing the champagne glasses that the bride and groom had bought specially for the occasion. I turned out that I was the first person to open the box and the glasses were coated in paper dust with a liberal sprinkling of polystyrene balls. Still, the champagne sparkled well in them.

No sooner had I achieved this than a couple came running out of the church laughing themselves almost to the point of hysteria. They asked me if I knew where they could find something to mend the grooms trousers. Apparently as he had knelt down at the altar, it had been accompanied by the sound of his trousers splitting from seam to seam. Of course it's not the done thing to derive any form of enjoyment from such a situation. So I turned my back before smiling.

Finally away to the reception, the groom caught my attention by gently tapping on the glass partition between us with the silver tip of his walking cane. To be honest, referring to me as "My Man" was pretty much the final straw!

I'm quite sure that they had the time of their lives, goodness knows they had put plenty of effort into it all. I just can't help but wonder if they really did have Ozzy Osbourne booked to sing at the reception.

As I write this I am sitting in 'Angela' outside another church, waiting for another happy couple to begin their new lives together.

Watch this space...

Rant.

This week’s blog was going to be about the wedding that I drove last Saturday. However when I looked over the first draft I realised that it didn’t make compulsive reading.

Certainly the tale of the young lady who appeared in a doorway topless except for a small t-shirt held in front of her would please some readers. Others may be interested in the antics of the somewhat eccentric lady tottering about on bright red stiletto shoes quaffing champagne and becoming increasingly animated as each minute passed.

But really are they stories for this place?

More worthy of comment I feel is the appalling lack of service that one gets in the UK at the moment.

I rant, I sometimes wish that I didn’t, but I do. I feel the injustice when I am given shoddy service by people who should know better.
I am fed up with being told by a salesperson or supplier that they’ll get back to me and knowing that the chances of it really happening are perilously close to zero.

A friend of mine is trying to buy a house. We all know that it is supposed to be one of the most stressful things that one can undertake. So why then, does she have to be the one chasing up estate agents? Why is her vendor’s estate agent so seemingly incompetent that she has to explain to him how to handle the problems?

Daily we are told of the Global Economic Downturn. Thousands of people are being put out of work or under the threat of redundancy. Yet some of those who are fortunate enough to be in gainful employment are so disrespectful to their peers that they cannot be bothered to do their job even to a moderately good standard.

It’s easy to grumble and let’s face it we all enjoy a good old moan from time to time. I have decided though that now I must change my tack. No longer will I complain to an organisation for shoddy service. If they cannot see that their lack of professionalism is damaging to them they deserve to fail. Why should I try to stop them?

What I will do, however, is to praise those who do provide exactly the service that they claim. This way I hope that in time their good name and reputation will make an impact.

Rant over…

Working the Problem

It was going to be a walk in the park. Collect the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, Anne. Pick up the bride, just a 10 minute drive away. Another 10 minutes to the church and then off to the reception at Great Fosters in Egham (see "Flowers, Mangoes and a Car for The Queen" - Bomber's Stories).

However, all the best laid plans and all that...

I arrived to pick up the car to find another driver, Chris, pacing up and down with a concerned look. Due to an unfortunate error the second driver on his job was unavailable, leaving him in the position of needing to be able to drive two cars! After a couple of phone calls, it was arranged that I would drive the bridesmaids car for him and my nice easy job would be handed over to someone else.

My first stroke of luck came when I looked at Chris's job sheet and found that the church was one that I had been to a couple of weeks ago in a pretty little village called Wonersh (http://www.wonershparish.org/wonersh/index.html) and the Bride's house was just around the corner from it. The downside was that we had to get across Guildford, which on a Saturday lunch time is no mean feat.

Thankfully many road users are sympathetic to a large shiny car with white ribbons and will often yield at road junctions for us.

We got the wedding party from the house to the church without any further traumas, and took ourselves into Wonersh village for a cool drink, before planning the rest of the afternoon.
Another look at Chris' jobsheet told us that the reception was to be held at The South Lodge Hotel in Lower Beeding, West Sussex. (http://www.southlodgehotel.co.uk/EXCLUSIVE_HOTELS/the_hotel.aspx)

Now this is where the pressure really started to mount, because I had not expected to be doing this job, I wasn't carrying my sat-nav and my local atlas doesn't cover East Sussex. Thankfully Chris had the foresight to print out driving instructions before he left home. This meant that I could leave them lying on the seat next to me and read them as I drove, easier said than done, but much better than getting lost.

Given that it a was a glorious day, I decided that I would drive the journey to South Lodge with the roof down. However I hadn't accounted for the mother of the bride's hat, which with a little breeze beneath it soon threatened to take to the skies. It was safely recovered and placed carefully in the front of the car with me. Soon after doing this my driving instructions fell the floor, leaving me once again in the lap of the gods. I tried to continue as best I could, but decided that after completely circumnavigating a roundabout I was better off coming clean and admitting that I was in a bit of a lather.

It has to be said that I owed a huge debt of gratitude to the little Irish lady who unfazed sat in the back of the car, confidently giving me instructions. Once we had safely arrived at South Lodge and I had apologised for my lack of professionalism, it transpired that the only person who had been to the hotel before was the bride's mother, and she wasn't entirely sure where it was. Her earlier confidence had been complete bluster.

I can only assume that the Blarney Stone has a lipstick mark from her kiss on it...

Old Ladies and Chancers

Hampton Court Palace was taken over from The Order of St John by Cardinal Wolsey in 1514. Over the following seven years it was rebuilt to be the finest palace in England at a cost of two hundred thousand gold crowns.

King Henry VIII first stayed there in 1525 and by all accounts it was noted by him that the Palace and gardens on the bank of The River Thames was considerably grander than his residence in Whitehall, London.

By 1529 Wolsey had fallen from grace and the King took the palace for his own. Within six months he had started a rebuilding program which would see great expansion of the property, leaving almost no trace of the Cardinal's original building.

In 1838 Queen Victoria completed extensive renovation works and opened the Palace to the public. By this time it was no longer used as a Royal residence. In 1952 the building was granted Grade 1 listing. Throughout the Twentieth Century the Palace housed fifty "grace and favour" apartments and it was an elderly resident of one of these who caused a major fire in 1986. Subsequent restoration work was completed in 1990.

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Sitting in front of this magnificent Tudor building, under a sky of bright blue with just a few clouds seemingly just added for interest, Grace looked every inch the grand dame that she is.

Grace is a 1957 Rolls Royce Silver Dawn. Only eighteen hundred of these cars were ever made. Twelve hundred of them were built as right hand drive variants for the American market, so that makes her just one of six hundred cars.

The bridal party had posed for all of their photographs and left for their reception in The Garden Room. Before I left I took the opportunity to take a couple of photos myself. After all it’s not often that one has an opportunity to capture two such majestic sights in one frame.

As I walked back to the car I was stopped by a gentleman with his wife and two daughters.

“How much for a lift home?” he asked.

Now I have to admit I was somewhat taken aback by his opening gambit.

“I’m sorry?”

“How much for a lift home to Walton from here?”

“Sir, this is not a taxi you know…”

“Everyone’s got a price.”

“Not I.”

Realising he was getting no where the gentleman changed his tack and started to ask questions about the car. Finally he brought the subject back around to money again.

“So how much is it worth? No, no don’t tell me let me guess…”

I have to admit that my patience was wearing a little thin by this time. It had been a reasonably long job and in my black suit, I was becoming uncomfortably warm. My downfall was that I simply cannot resist a verbal jousting match and he had just thrown down the gauntlet.

I let him continue.

“Six hundred.”

“Six hundred?” I repeated. “Six hundred thousand pounds. You are joking aren’t you?”

His face fell, his daughters looked uncomfortable. I had a lot of sympathy for them. Their father was beginning to make himself look a fool. The elder of the two asked if she may have a look inside. I opened the rear door for her, I couldn’t help but feel that she just wanted to hide.

“Do you really think that a car worth that much money would be put to work as a wedding car?”

“How much then?” He countered.

“I’m not going to be so vulgar and discuss the value of the car, let’s just say that you were out by a considerable margin.”

Briefly crestfallen he tried again, “So how much for a lift back to Walton?”

I took my leave…

Hypnosis to Halitosis

It’s a funny old world. There are personal dramas and sagas played out on a daily basis. Each person has his or her own play in which they alone are the key role.

The new week started, as the last one ended, with a visit to a hypnotist.

With the Formula One world gearing up for another tour of the globe, equipment, cars and people were all being mustered to be packed and freighted. This inevitably resulted in some fairly stressful and often fraught times. Thus I decided that in order to help me work “smarter” a quick reset of the brain wouldn’t go amiss.

An interesting journey where I re-learnt to relax and focus. Much to my surprise, I discovered that one of the biggest is, no – was procrastination. So that was dealt with straight away!

Monday brought with it the shocking news that a supplier in America had taken his own life. Quite what happened that day, I am sure no one will ever fully know, much less understand.
Whenever I had spoken with Jamie on the telephone, the conversations would always be lengthy and punctuated by much laughter. A great, larger than life character who never failed to be positive.
It became obvious during subsequent phone calls and emails with his work “family” that he will be sorely missed by those who knew him better than I ever would. I am sure that wherever his soul now is, it is a much brighter place for having him there.

The latter half of the week was dominated not only with the shipment of McLaren Racing’s small part of the Formula One circus to Australia, but also by the retirement of one of the most interesting and amusing people that I have had the privilege of knowing.
Tyler Alexander, native of Massachusetts, USA came to England in the early 1960’s and subsequently became involved in the motor racing activities of a young New Zealander, Bruce McLaren. His professional life has been well documented, as have many of the hundreds of stunning photographs that he has taken on his amazing journey.

On Friday 20th March 2009, Tyler “TJA” Alexander, Ray “Tex” Rowe and Neil “Tinker” Trundle were awarded fellowships of McLaren. A new initiative to honour those who have helped McLaren to become one of the most successful motor racing teams of all times. Between the three men there are in excess of 125 years of motor racing passion and legend.

The weekend brought for me the first wedding chauffeuring job of the year. Driving “Anne” a 1959 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud I took a young lady called Natasha to a picturesque little church in Effingham, Surrey where she was married to Phil. The party then retired to the stunning Horsley Towers Hotel for the wedding breakfast and celebrations. A large part of life’s great adventure for this young couple. A tiny piece of the huge jigsaw that makes every hour of every day of the world that we all share.

Life is full of huge peaks and troughs. While Natasha and Phil were celebrating the happiest day of their lives in Surrey, a memorial service was being held in Lauderdale, Florida for Jamie. Hundreds of people were preparing to leave their families and travel to the other side of the world, not to return for many weeks. One man who wasn’t going with them this time was living the first day of the rest of his life.

During the presentation of Tyler’s fellowship, Ron Dennis, CEO of the McLaren Group, and ironically a man on Jamie Connell’s wish list of people to meet, reminded the assembled group of one of TJ’s many profound, laconic statements.

“Halitosis is better than no breath at all.”