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A day at the races
Page 68
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1 t's a tough life, sitting in the grounds of a stately home sipping champagne and devouring oysters whilst surrounded by supermodels of the two-legged and four-wheeled variety.
No. I've not won the lottery — it's merely a blip in the form of a day out to Goodwood.There you're rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous including stars of the motoring world Damon Hill, Jackie Stewart, Stirling Moss and the great Le Mans winner Derek Bell. But in the end the car is the star at this motorists' mecca and its magnificent Festival of Speed.
Goodwood is unique.You can touch the cars and speak to their famous drivers; even pass the mechanics a spanner. There are massive crowds but never a queue.Wh at marvellous organisation! Something for everyone and the kids are well catered for, from a very real Laurel and Hardy to the Wacky Races and a soap box derby down Goodwood's famous hill.
For the petrolheads there's the smell (just like a motorway queue), the noise and the cars — fast cars— to wander around, to sit in and then to watch perform ing. But this year the star of the show had wings:a South African Airlines 747 Jumbo Jet thrown around the sky like a Spitfire: absolutely mind-blowing.
Goodwood has long been a must-do and if you love cars, go one day. You definitely won't be disappointed.
For a while, another 'mustdo' for me has been to travel to Spain.This month's main trip was to Madrid and, despite a temperature of over 40° C, it was a pleasure.
Busy laying blacktop
Spain's road network has changed dramatically since I was last there several years ago; they've be laying blacktop with vigour. Madrid now seems to have ring roads on its ring roads. My co-driver's main reaction, however, was that the place doesn't stink any more. Spain looks incredibly wealthy.
The absence of British trucks is also noticeable, except for furniture vans taking all those Brits who complain about immigration here in the UK to become immigrants on Spain's southern coast.! expect the furniture vans will soon be busy hack-loading the Spanish,sick of all the British immigrants in Spain.
Diesel, fags and food all remain cheap while the police still loiter like vultures,though this time they didn't swoop on me. Oh,! nearly forgot: another breakdown. The window wouldn't go up.You'd think it's just a case of removing the door panel and winding the window with an alien key. but someone forgot to offer that option on my particular electric windows.
Well, at least the breakdown service worked eventuaIly.A repair and maintenance contract on modern trucks is without doubt an absolute necessity— it never seemed such a problem in the old days.
I'm not going to slag anyone off this month... if the whole Department for Transport slings its hook that will be sufficient to keep me quiet. Altematively,if Alistair Darling cares to avail himself of the platform provided in CM S' editorial pages he could do something really useful and tell us about something that his Department does right — anything at all.
Struggling are we,Alistair?