"Classic" Car Rally

Before cricket yesterday, I took myself off down the park to have a look at the East Midlands Classic Car Rally. Now when I was a kid, "Classic Cars" were what I envisaged to be those boxy Bugsy Malone type cars with wind up handles and running boards and an animal on the bonnet.

Nowadays, thanks to the  passing of time, a Classic car can now be a design horror like a 1980s Austin Maestro Van den Plas in excrement brown. You'd have maybe taken such a car if it was a prize on 3-2-1 but you wouldn't want to buy one.

However, there were some beautiful MGs, E types and Triumph Spitfires. My stepfather had one of  the latter when I first knew him.

He drove us to Scotland  with me on the non-existent back seat  with my two gerbils.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 06.08.18

Old Cars on a Cold Day

As part of the rather disappointing Christmas Market - a lot of stalls pulled out on account of the weather apparently - East Midlands Classic Car Club turned up with some nice pretty cars to look at.

Now I am far from a petrolhead; I don't drive and I don't suppose I will ever learn now, it's my way of keeping the people of Britain safe. But I love the days of cars with character, cars with faces, just like you don't see any more.

These cars were also decidely of a non British-Leyland bent, the company designed to destroy the UK car industry by making some of the most appalling and ugly cars ever made. I think East Midlands Car Club have virtually all of the working Austin Allegros left, you see those at the summer festival. They were famously more aerodynamic when travelling backwards.

These beasts were much sportier; rally looking Escort mark 1s and Capris, the sort you used to see doing rallycross on Grandstand in 1982, the classic vehicle for "Kev and Sharon" green plastic strips at the top of the windscreen.

If you want to be super-stereotypical, perhaps even a pair of fluffy dice as well.

Soon, you might even see my stepfather's Peugeot 205 cabby there, his pride and joy!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 11.12.17

Retro Cars on Parade

Yesterday at the Sconce all the child Pokemon hunters - and adult ones - would have found it rather harder to snaffle their snorloxes as the park was invaded by a family fun day, and a big classic car rally.

The cars weren't classic in the sense that child me would think of; Austin 7s and their boxy compadres, but it is 35 years down the line and what now qualifies as "Classic" is something rather more modern.

My stepfather as a former Triumph Spitfire owner would have enjoyed seeing a couple of them there; I remember being driven 240 miles to Scotland with my pet gerbils and I on the non-existent back seat. To make up for him missing them, I bought him an AC DC T-shirt a bit later on.

There was an Austin Maxi, which surely would have qualified as the ugliest British car ever made if it wasn't for the existence of the Austin Allegro hatchback; one of these in classic 70s brown was also present, as was a Morris Marina.

If only there had been an Austin Princess parked on the grass, then there would have been a full house of the cars that between them destroyed the British automobile industry.

The sun was out, and it made the already polished-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives cars shine like suns. They were all very very gorgeous indeed.

Irony - I have never learned to drive.

Si

All images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 08.08.16

Classic Cars at the Park

It was a festival at Sconce Park today, rather easily named "Sconce Fest" for publicity purposes. I had no idea of this of course, I had just decided to head to the park for tea because my cricket match today was cancelled.

Disappointing, as I'd hoped to try and find a bit of bowling form after yesterday, and also to improve my batting against pace bowling. Instead I sat drinking tea, watching ninjas coming and going from their stall, and thought about how I can interest more folk at work to take an interest in what's around them. Ideally a community event like this one should have perhaps been something I'd have been able to alert them to.

However, I'm trying to get projects on cycling and the nature on the site going.

I also reflected on cricket and my own situation. My sister thinks it is good for me to be in a team environment from time to time and it certainly keeps my concentration on matters away from my tics, although a team-mate asked me yesterday "Do you have trouble with your nerves Si?"

It is obviously noticed by the cricket fraternity then.

When I finished my tea and my pondering, I had a wander around the site, where folk where demonstrating bowls on a long green carpet, ninja skills, and a miniature classic car rally was taking place. Lover as I am of retro things, if not necessarily cars in themselves, I found myself enjoying their deeply loved shininess and their charismatic emblems.

Ironic really, as I can't drive.

Si