A great move from the EU today just as the five days “crunch debate” gets underway in the Commons.

The advocate general of the European Court of Justice has indicated that the UK could (most probably) revoke article 50 and stay in the EU without the consent of the other 27 member states.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hal…lel…ujah!

Seriously, the full blown choral, orchestral, firework supported vision occurred to me as soon as I read the news.

At last there is a decent alternative to the prime minister’s shoddy leave “deal” or the possibility of a “no deal” exit.

Bearing in mind the utter farce that has been Brexit from the start to date (not to mention the damage to our currency and markets), let’s have another referendum, put the matter back to the British public and ask them if they think they made the right decision last time. 

I have written about Brexit and the politics surrounding it a few times (some of which are shared below) but have generally been relatively quiet on the subject over the last two years or so. Why, well what difference would it make once article 50 was triggered?

I’ll be frank, my belief is that the referendum should never have been held in the first place. As an analogy, if your car was broken down, or if you were in hospital awaiting an operation, would you let a group of unqualified, inexperienced but enthusiastic folk loose on your engine or your body?

You wouldn’t, you’d wait for a decent mechanic/surgeon that knew what he/she was doing.

With Brexit, the British public just didn’t know what it was doing. How could it? The public at large is not made up of economists, lawyers, negotiators etc. and the information/histrionics we were all presented with was flawed, spun and at its worst, totally fabricated. And then there was the illegal and/or immoral campaign funding and the questionable digital campaign manipulation. And, and, and…

The original referendum results were so close that a rematch shouldn’t be out of the question. And for any of those that were wavering anyway, were protest voting because they didn’t think ‘leave’ would prevail, or for those coerced by the opinions of their loved ones, the chance for another vote might be appreciated.

Even today, the politicians arguing about the publication of the government’s legal advice have achieved a contempt of parliament outcome. Furthermore, May’s “deal” is expected to get rejected by parliament and there is so little time left before the UK leaves the EU that we can only choose between and rock and a hard place.

From a parochial perspective, when I cock things up, I’ll admit I got it wrong, apologise to those I have affected and then go about putting things right. The public should have the chance to admit that, in hindsight, it’s original decision might have been wrong.

I know many, including some of my friends and family that, will disagree with me but we should have the chance to pause, reflect and reassess before we make any decisions we later regret. And in a new referendum, if the public still chooses Brexit, then at least we all go into the abyss not being lied to and with a better appreciation of the challenges/consequences.

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Previous Posts
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/resigned-to-mediocrity
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/election-irony
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/march-moaning
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/eu-hokey-cokey
​

I am used to writing for work, but the material is rarely personal and presented in the first person. A blog post I wrote that bucks that trend has just been published on my employer’s website. The article was in connection with the Brake’s 2018 Road Safety Week Campaign. My contribution was about motorcycle riding and you can read about it here -  Road Safety Week 2018 – Part 1

There isn’t much point in reproducing the content verbatim here because it would just confuse the search engines and mess with my company’s rankings, but please have a read and see what you think.

Despite its distinctly conversational, rather than corporate tone, my post survived largely without censorship. If you’re interested though, the last bullet point on my top ten tips was toned down a little – it originally read “Finally, if you spit, throw your cigarette, or any other rubbish for that matter, out of the window when you have a motorcyclist behind you … you are an inconsiderate arse.”

Since I acquired my Yamaha YBR 125 Custom at the end of August (previous article available), I have ridden it over 1600 miles and am getting more experienced/adept; I have even had to alter my insurance to increase my mileage allowance (and I am already getting close to the increased number).

Though the YBR is/has been brilliant, next year I will have the acquisition of my full motorcycle licence high up on my list of priorities. It’s not because I am bothered by my “L” plates, in fact I think of those as being my friend – other road users make allowances for me because of them. The main reason is that I already want a bike that is faster and safer than the 125 I am entitled to ride with my provisional.

You might be wondering how I can combine faster and safer in the same sentence, I’ll admit it sounds counter intuitive, but bear with me and I’ll explain it.

If you have read the Road Safe piece, you’ll have noted that I mention in the "advice for other motorists" bullet point list, that the bike will lose speed when going up hills, a twenty MPH drop is not unusual. That lost speed takes a while to put back on too.
 
To be safer, I think that the ability to stay with the car traffic at all times would reduce the likelihood of frustrating other drivers and prompting risky overtaking manoeuvres.

I’ll admit that I am not ready for a bike that does 180 mph or gets to 60 in 2-3 seconds, but a bike that will cruise without missing a beat (or being thrashed too hard) at 70mph and get there in 6-7 seconds would, I genuinely believe, be a safer proposition on the road.   

The reality is that most people driving cars will never have ridden a motorbike and the expectation that they have about a bike’s performance may not be aligned with the truth. When cars have been following me more closely than I’d like, and when I am losing speed without braking (and the brake light glowing), the chances of being driven into are not insignificant.

But the provisional licence doesn’t allow for a bike to be bigger than 125cc, so taking the full test is the only way to get to ride something a little more powerful. From a parochial perspective, I’d like the rules to be loosened to allow 250cc on a provisional, but I am not negatively disposed towards the motorcycle licencing process at all. I think that getting a provisional, getting on the road and getting some proper riding experience before having to go through a more rigorous test on a big bike is a much better approach than that imposed for car driving.
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We all suffer from a little bit of OCD don’t we? It can’t just be me, right?

I am an easy going kind of a guy but there are certain things that need to be just so in my life, not many but a few.
Examples for me include:

• The cutlery tray – no mixing of knives, forks and spoons and all eating irons facing the same direction in the tray
• Toilet roll – I want the leading edge on the underside to pull down rather than pull over
• Books in author sets and/or subject areas
• Ties sorted by colour
• My CDs – really need to be in alphabetical order

I am practical and believe that some things need to be ordered to allow stuff to be achieved in an efficient way – like finding a particular album when I have a great many of them in my collection.

Since moving house, almost two years ago now, my CDs have been all higgledy-piggledy and it has been a source of nagging irritation ever since. In my defence, they were packed in alphabetical order but when it came to unpacking the boxes into the new house, it became too great a task and too low in priority. Some boxes were in the house, some were in the garage, the boxes I wanted first were inevitably at the bottom of a stack etc. Mrs Baldwin had 65 things for me to do and alphabetising my CDs at that time would have resulted in violence and/or divorce. You get the drift.

Being an old and avid music fan, I have amassed circa 3,000 CDs since I began buying them in the 1980s. Having the collection randomly distributed around the house resulted in a range of frustrating outcomes. Taking ages to find a given album, buying it again because I couldn’t remember/prove if I had it or not, wanting to listen to a particular album but then selecting something else because it was easier etc.

Last weekend, having failed my own OCD standard for so long, I decided to get to grips with the alphabetising task …

​And bloody hell, I have been at it on and off since Saturday and have only finished to “C”. Hours more work awaits me before I can relax in the knowledge that the music collection will be properly accessible once more.

But the work will be worthwhile, I’ll be able to tick off a job on the list before I end up ticking over it.

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This month sees my site complete its seventh year of service, which, in my opinion, is at least worth a passing comment.

Life has been so hectic for me recently that, perversely, this latest anniversary comes at a time when I haven’t actually published anything for a little while. On the bright side though, the volume of material previously shared continues to generate a reasonable volume of traffic.

There has been plenty to write about over the last six weeks or so, but the time to dedicate to the written word has been limited and other priorities have been more pressing. So as not to beat myself up about it, I have been viewing the break as a bit of a holiday (and in my defence, some of the time not spent on writing was genuinely spent on holiday).

I have been to a few gigs, clocked up 1500 miles on my motorbike, written plenty of material for work, organised a conference and have even been a Poppy Appeal authorised volunteer door-to-door collector for the Royal British Legion (my second year of service) ... so I haven’t been lazy.

This post is of course meant to be a low-key celebration rather than an abject apology so I am going to stop with the excuses and state …

“YAY”

And in my best Len Goodman voice …

“Seven”.

Before I go, and in a desire to add some actual value to the self-congratulatory nonsense above – you have to watch “They Shall Not Grow Old” if you missed it on BBC2 on Sunday night (11/11/18). If you wore your poppy with pride, you really should see the Peter Jackson documentary.

Jackson took old WW1 footage and used modern technology to remaster it, adding colour, introducing sound and slowing the film speed down.  He used lip readers to enable him to add back in the dialogue of the soldiers filmed and the results were (in my best Craig Revel-Horwood) “A mazing”.

I saw Jackson interviewed when the film was released in the cinema and his view was that people could be forgiven for thinking that the war was something that happened in silence and black and white. Obviously, WW1 happened in vivid colour, was noisy and smelly and TSNGO was all the more poignant for bringing it to life (and death). 

When you wear a poppy (or like me, knock on doors to fundraise), you can have a much better appreciation of why it is so important to “remember”.

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This month has seen my car show calendar completed for 2018. On 2nd September, I attended the inaugural Vauxfest event at Billing Aquadrome and on the 8/9th I attended the AACI’s last bash of the summer.

Vauxfest
The VBOA has been absent from Billing for the last couple of years, but now that the venue has U-turned on its “no more car shows” decision, a new event has popped up to fill the Vauxhall (and Opel) shaped void.

Vauxfest, the brainchild of organiser Richard Watt, ran between the 1st and 2nd September and I went along on the Sunday to see what it was all about.

Rather than being organised around car clubs, the event was open to anyone owning/driving a “loosely” historic Vauxhall/Opel. An owner would arrive with his/her vehicle and park it in the next available space in the current row. This meant that vehicles of all types and ages were displayed together.

In addition to the vehicles, there was an autojumble and various catering/other concessions.

Because of the nature of the event, the vehicles on display probably differed quite considerably across the two days. I have no idea if Saturday was bigger and better than Sunday or not.

I arrived at Billing around 12:30pm, by that point, and by my reckoning, there were approximately 100-120 vehicles.
 
I am fan of the seventies stuff but there wasn’t much to get excited about from that decade, there was more from the noughties, 90s and to a lesser extent, the 80s. I wandered around with my camera for about half an hour before I left. 

Lots of effort had obviously gone into organising Vauxfest, but it was low key in comparison to the VBOA National Rally. Still, it’s early days for the event and I’ll look forward to it growing in awareness and status in the future.

Click on any image below to enlarge. High resolution images available, if you'd like one, just get in touch.

AACI Late Summer Open Nationals
On the 8th and 9th I went to Billing again, but this time to attend the American Automobile Cub International Late Summer Open Nationals. Regular readers will know that over the last few years, this car club’s events have become firm favourites on my calendar. This was the third such gathering this year for me.

Normally I attend AACI events on the Sunday of the weekend they are held, this year, because I already had commitments on the Sunday, I decided to go on the Saturday.

The weather had been predicted to be horrible; the afternoon was overcast but, aside from occasional spitting rain, the heavy showers predicted didn’t materialise. I took a chance and headed to Billing to find that lots of exhibitors had decided not to take this risk.

The number of vehicles on show was frankly disappointing but there were still some gems. The Starsky and Hutch liveried Grand Torino shown below was a joy to see. It wasn’t there on the Sunday so I would have missed it if I’d stayed at home.

After mooching around for a little while and accepting that the returns for the journey out were limited, I decided that I’d just have to come back on the Sunday too. Though I only had until mid-morning to participate, I am glad that I returned because the Sunday was significantly better.

The weather was better too and this time, I spend a couple of happy hours with my camera enjoying and photographing a range of exciting vehicles. More were still arriving as I left, but I couldn’t hang around.

One poignant thing about this event was the respect shown and sense of loss felt in the American car community following the recent passing of the legendary Burt Reynolds. In terms of the cult of the Pontiac Trans Am, Reynolds was almost single-handedly responsible for the car’s place in history. Smokey and the Bandit was a feature of this show and there were plenty of Trans Ams present as well as red Bandit sleeved jackets, cowboy hats and fake moustaches. There was also a “Snowman” Kenworth truck and trailer.

As mentioned above, the outing on the 9th completed a hattrick of enjoyable AACI events and my thanks goes to the organisers for all their hard work.
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Click on any image below to enlarge. High resolution images available, if you'd like one, just get in touch.

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Vauxfest
AACI - https://www.aac-int.com/

Other Relevant Posts:
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/american-cars-and-fathers-day-thoughts
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/car-show-and-car-sos
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/aaci-late-summer-open-nationals-2017
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/aaci-summer-open-nationals-2017
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/24424-the-aaci-summer-nationals-and-fathers-day
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/aaci-late-summer-open-nationals

On the 25th August I went to The Craufurd Arms in Wolverton to see Electric Six. The band from Detroit, fronted by Dick Valentine, achieved fame in the early noughties with songs like “Danger! High Voltage” and “Gay Bar”. The gig was my second outing in Milton Keynes in two days that featured bands from across the Atlantic (see separate Anvil review).
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DSM 1V
Electric Six was supported by a UK outfit I’d never heard of called “DSM 1V”. I thought that an odd name for a band and so I went and looked up the reference. It turns out that it is a diagnosis term for a major depressive disorder.

And that was sort of appropriate given that the melancholic eighties inspired electric pop/rock band with a synthesized drum machine reminded me a little of REM … and Michael Stipe and his men were a miserable bunch.
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Again, like REM, DSM 1V’s music didn’t inspire me. But moustachioed and mullet haired front man, Guy McKnight, was interesting and had a great voice. To me, he looked a bit like Freddie Mercury, behaved like Iggy pop and danced like a proper space cadet. Whilst the rest of his band mates were unanimated, McKnight was manic, intense, angry even and if he’d be fronting a punk band and the music was heavier and faster, he’d have been brilliant … as it was he looked/behaved like a nutter who might lose it at any moment.

McKnight tried to get a relatively uninspired audience rocking to his manic beat but the pogoing, the forays over the barriers and out into the audience, the invasion of personal space and the direct, borderline aggressive staring didn’t really work on the night.

When the set was done, the band cleared off the stage and that was pretty much that.

During the downtime between acts, I recognised and talked to a few folks that I recognised from the Anvil gig the night before, I wasn’t the only one have two nights out on the bounce.

Electric Six
Whilst Electric Six has been prolific in producing music over the years, I only have “Fire” in my CD collection and that is the album that contains the tracks that the band is best known for (see above).

The 25th was the first time I had seen the band perform live so I didn’t know what to expect in terms of presentation or antics. When the band members were in their civvies pre-set and doing their equipment and sound checks, I’ll be honest, they could have been the roadies for all I knew.

When the band members dressed in their performing finery finally took to the stage, there was no doubting who the fans had come to see. Electric Six got a much warmer welcome than DSM 1V. The gig was a sell out and the Craufurd’s show hall was packed for the headliners; the audience a full mix of ages from teen to middle agers, lots of women in the audience too.

When I first saw front man Dick Valentine, I thought he had a look like Tom Hanks about him, mannerisms like Harry Hill and a dress sense like your secondary school history teacher. Non-descript slacks, comfortable shoes, a red shirt with a broad collar and a green velvet sports jacket.

All the band members were wearing “smart” clothes and most of them were wearing shades … no tour shirts on show. The primary guitarist, referred to as the “White Wolf”, wore a white suit, he reminded me of Kelsey Grammer or Alistair Petrie. The secondary guitarist in his sports jacket, slacks, shirt and shades looked like Goodfella, Ray Liotta, and the bass player reminded me of Jason Statham. So, without even contemplating the keyboardist and the drummer, you’d got a school teacher, a gangster, a hard man and a show off. Electric Six’s music crosses genres and defies categorisation, some hard rock, some glam rock, some pop etc... the outfits worn defied the rock categories for sure.

 I don’t have the set list to share, I didn’t get to pick one up at the end of the gig and, to be honest, there were a number of tunes I simply didn’t recognise. Singing along was always going to be a struggle for me, but it certainly wasn’t a problem for many others present. All in all, there were between fifteen and twenty songs including the encore.

Though Gay Bar, Danger! High Voltage, Dance Commander and many other cool tracks were shared, it was probably the final track of the evening that actually impressed me the most. I think it may even have been called “Show-stopper”. During this tune, the band completely switched around. Valentine took to the drums, the drummer took to the microphone and sang, the White Wolf picked up the base, the base player picked up the Wolf’s guitar, the keyboard player took the second guitar and the second guitarist took over keyboard duties. The revised band played flawlessly and, in that act, proved that all the members are flexible and skilled musicians. 
   
Electric Six, whilst not as heavy or as fast as the bands I usually see did genuinely impress. The gig was good fun, good natured and well appreciated by all in attendance.

Full marks to The Craufurd Arms too, its ability to attract transatlantic talent to Milton Keynes is to be applauded as loudly and enthusiastically as Electric Six was.

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Electric Six

Towards the end of August, I went to a couple of cracking gigs at The Craufurd Arms in Wolverton. The first gig was Anvil on the 24th and the second was Electric Six on the 25th. I’ll write about the gigs separately.
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Anvil is a long established Canadian heavy metal band comprised of Steve “Lips” Kudrow (guitar/vocals), Robb Reiner (drums) and Chris Robertson (bass). The fellas were only in the UK for a couple of gigs (the other was the Stonedeaf festival in Newark) and were promoting the new album “Pounding the Pavement”.

And it turned out that the album title was a nod to real life. During the set, Kudrow explained, the band is determined to keep working and making metal music despite increasing age, decreasing awareness and reducing incomes. He likened Anvil to door to door (in the band’s case gig to gig) salesman doing the hard yards and trying to make the sales.

Anvil’s heyday was the 1980s and the fellas are of retirement age now, Kudrow is 67. Like the band, the audience was an aging bunch too, I guess that those that followed Anvil from its early days are going to be a little long in the tooth by now.  Lots of grey hairs were present and I fitted in just fine (though I’ll admit I should have worn a tour shirt of some description instead of my Adidas branded generic rugby shirt, which didn’t fit in at all).

To keep the earnings up and the costs down, I found out later that the band was travelling light … very light. The chaps turned up at the Craufurd with two guitars, some symbols and a small quantity of merchandise. That meant the venue had to go into overdrive to provide and then set up the rest of the kit (amps, drum kit, microphones etc.) necessary for the gig to take place.

For the band, there were no back up guitars and no trusted roadies to “fix” things if they went wrong. Fortunately, there were no busted strings during the performance and so no one would have been any the wiser that the fellas were on a tight budget.
 
After the support act, “The Tony Rolfe Band”, had completed its set, Anvil took to the stage. Shortly after launching into action, Kudrow was off the said stage with his guitar and performing in the audience. I was very close to the front of the hall and that meant it was amusing trying to decide which way to look. Of course, Kudrow’s guitar’s power cable followed him onto the floor and that left me and many others passing it backwards and forwards over our heads as he meandered around the hall before returning to his band mates. When out of microphone range, which was an issue as he mingled, Kudrow had a neat trick of holding his guitar up to his mouth so that the pickups would act as a substitute.

In addition to Kudrow being enthusiastic off stage, he and Chris Robertson were very animated when on it too. Rolling eyes, big grins, lots of lip action and other exaggerated facial expressions were so common that I found myself thinking about Aardman Animations and Wallace and Gromit. Maybe the next time Anvil makes a movie, Nick Parks could be the man to sculpt it.
   
There were various other points of amusement during the evening. At one stage, Steve Kudrow played his guitar with the aid of a gold coloured, penis shaped vibrator.  Then in between songs, he reminisced about times past and things lost. His stories about meeting Lemmy and engaging over drugs and booze, were entertaining and enjoyed by all present. He could do a good impression of Lemmy’s gruff voice too. 
 
Here’s the set list: 

1. March of the Crabs
2. 666
3. Ooh Baby
4. Badass Rock 'n' Roll
5. Doing What I Want
6. Winged Assassins
7. Free as the Wind
8. On Fire
9. This Is Thirteen
10. Mothra
11. Bitch in the Box
12. Swing Thing
13. Daggers and Rum
14. Metal on Metal
15. Running (encore)
16. Born to Be Wild (encore)

During the set, Robb Reiner performed a belter of a drum solo. Bearing in mind that he wasn’t using his own stuff and wouldn’t have known until the evening what was included in the kit he was provided, he worked his magic with real aplomb.

At the end of the gig, I went to buy a copy of Pounding the Pavement but there were none left. The old hustlers lost themselves a sale, which is a shame bearing in mind how keen the band is to keep its flame alive. I’ll be able to get a copy on Amazon, but I regret that I didn’t get a copy at the gig and get the guys to sign it.

I can however report that the gig was good fun, good natured and top quality … and that I’d really like to see Anvil again.

I understand from the event team at the Craufurd that Kudrow/Reiner/Roberston had a great time too and are keen to play the venue again in the future. Hopefully next time, they’ll come slightly better prepared.

I’d bet that the fellas had a better time in Wolverton than they did in Newark. Playing at a festival just can’t be as immersive/rewarding as playing at a venue like The Craufurd Arms. 

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From the age of 16 I wanted to ride a motorbike, but I put it off for more than 30 years for all sorts of very sensible reasons (cost, danger, practicalities, higher priorities etc.) …

… and I’ll admit there was the issue that Mrs Baldwin threatened to divorce me if I succumbed to temptation.

But we have been married for a long time now and the kids are getting older …

And lately, the desire to tick the motorcycle thing off my mental bucket list was strong. My thought process was that I either took the plunge, or accepted that I was never going to do it. I have binned plenty of my dreams/fantasies over the years but this was one that I didn’t want to consign to the skip.

So, on the 17th August, I entered and ultimately passed my CBT. Passing was not a forgone conclusion and there were a number of occasions when I thought I might not “qualify”.  Fortunately, it all started to come together for me when out on the road later in the day. In the end, I achieved enough to get my certificate but was all too aware that getting it didn’t exactly make me Barry Sheene. What I would need was a lot more practice.
   
So, on Sunday 26th, I bought myself a motorbike.

The old-boy-buying-a-motorbike story has of course resulted in me being accused of having a mid-life crisis (that accusation initially levelled by Mrs Baldwin on Facebook) and I have had to acknowledge that there is some truth in it. My mid-life standing is of course without doubt, the “crisis” element is worthy of some reflection.

For me, it was never about rediscovering my lost youth or making myself more attractive to women (though both outcomes would be okay too). My issue was simply time – it going by at pace and even beginning to run out, at least in terms of learning and then having the time to graduate up the motorcycle hierarchy of licences and engine CCs. As a mid-lifer, I know that I am not invincible and can’t take it for granted that my health and physical fitness (such as it is) will accompany me into my fifties and beyond.

Mastering my little red 125 Yamaha has become the latest challenge for me.

My first, and frankly Herculean comfort-zone-slasher, was driving it back the 72 miles from the outskirts of High Wycombe in what felt like monsoon conditions. The bloody rain was torrential.

The Moto GP at Silverstone got cancelled because the weather was so bad. But it didn’t stop me!

Not perhaps the brightest introduction to the world of two-wheeled motoring. Brave … maybe. Stupid … most probably. I was riding a new bike through places I had never been with no maps or satnav to guide me.

By the time I got home, I was soaked through to the skin and shivering. I kid you not, my boots were full of water and my leathers (jacket and gloves) leaked so much black dye into my arms/hands that it looked like I had sleeve tattoos. But …

… at least my first solo motorcycle trip didn’t see me crash it.

I have since added another 150 miles to the odometer and am a lot more competent/confident than I was on the 26th. Fortunately, the Yamaha is not fast and it takes a while to get to not fast too. Being very conscious of my inexperience, I also ride it sensibly, for sure a damn sight more carefully than I drive my car anyway (or would have ridden a motorbike in my youth). I don’t try to look cool either, obvious ‘L’ plates, a plain white helmet and a high vis vest accompany me on every trip.  Be safe, be seen is my mantra …

And crisis or not, that’s so middle aged!

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On the morning of Sunday 15th July, I went to the annual Vauxhall Bedford Opel Association (VBOA) rally. I have been every single year since 1996 (many other reviews available) and so I was hardly going to miss out this year. As was the case in 2017, the event was held at the Showground in Market Harborough. I arrived at around 10am and stayed until about 12pm.
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For the first time ever, my overall impression was one akin to disappointment.

On the bright side. The event was better organised than last year. Lessons had been learned and the meadows had been mowed and the overall space available had been better utilised.  

The reasons for my despondency came down to fewer vehicles being displayed (at least the seventies cars that most interested me anyway); added to that, it’s just about a year since my good friend Gary Martin died. It was Gary that originally introduced me to the Vauxhall car club scene back in the nineties. As I wandered around the showground, I thought about him, so I am sure that influenced my perspective too.

Being an event stalwart, I can report that I don’t see many new cars/participants, mainly the same vehicles year after year, albeit in declining numbers. When one year’s photo album is compared to another, I find that I have taken the same photos again.

Where the event used to occupy the best part of a day for me, this year, I was all done and ready to leave after a couple of hours.

Perhaps it was the World Cup final that was discouraged visitors?

I chose to go on the Sunday because I suspected attendance on Saturday would be most affected given that England was playing Belgium. But maybe the final was more of an attraction than the play off.

The Vauxhall Viva Owners’ Club used to be one of the best represented clubs at the rally, this year, for some reason, the volume of vehicles in the club’s allocated space was the lowest I have ever seen. Maybe the club is in some kind of organisational disarray. This bothered me because Gary used to run the memorabilia operation for the club back in the day and, across a few years in a row, I helped sell the merchandise at the VBOA events at Billing Aquadrome. 

In stark contrast, the Viva Outlaws Club, which used to be quite small, had managed to organise a far greater turnout, albeit only comprised of 1960s HB Vivas. 

The Droop Snoot Group (DSG - I used to be a member of this club) had a reasonable turnout but it seems to have experienced diminishing returns over the last few years. Even the Opel Manta Owners’ Club attendee numbers were down.
 
To complicate things further, some attractive vehicles were in odd places. Of the handful of photographed vehicles never seen before, a few of them weren’t with their peers. To illustrate, one of the nicest cars I saw, a yellow 1800 Magnum coupe, was in the car park rather than on display, which was a shame. Another smart looking HC derivative was on show but some distance away from the DSG or VVOA clubs (see the green car in the photo below). Both cars would have added value to either of the aforementioned clubs’ display spaces.

Despite the observations above, there were some new (to me) interesting vehicles to look at. On the DSG stand, there was a lovely, burgundy, rally prepared Magnum 2300 and on the VVOC, there was a red Viva HB convertible with fully modernised engine and running gear. With that car, I did find myself wondering if the cost associated with the conversion would have been reflected in the value of it afterwards. The purist in me wasn’t keen on the updates (and I didn’t like the alloys at all) but the practicalist (I made that word up) was thinking, it would be a lot more rewarding and sensible to drive with the enhancements.

And driving brings me to the end of this post - I’ll keep going to to the VBOA Annual Rally but if the current trends continue, it won’t be long before it will take me longer to drive to the event and back than I will actually spend there.

I have heard that the showground has got planning approval for housing – it might not be that long until the VBOA needs another venue re-think. Maybe a return to Billing?

Click on any image to enlarge. Higher resolution images available, just get in touch if you'd like one.

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Previous Posts
2012 http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/annual-vauxhall-pilgrimage-washout.html
2013 http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/vboa-all-car-club-rally-2013.html
2014 http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/that-petrol-emotion
2015​ http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/reflections-from-the-vboa-national-rally-billing-2015
2016 http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/vboa-national-rally-at-billing-aquadrome-july-2016
2017 Not Billing – a VBOA National Rally review

Other related posts
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/a-trip-down-memory-lane-pot-holes-and-all
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/the-droopsnoot-celebrates-its-40th-birthday
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/vauxhalls-heritage-centre-ndash-a-nostalgic-trip-to-luton.html
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/a-vauxhall-event-reminder-and-a-billing-plaque-saga-update
http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/the-omoc-comes-through-for-me.html

Third Party Site Links
VBOA
Viva Owners Club
Droop Snoot Group

I read the news about the death on Geoffrey Wellum on the BBC today and wanted to mark his passing in my own way. Wellum was a Battle of Britain pilot and he died at the grand old age of 96.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-44895703

Years ago, I read his book about his WW2 experiences entitled “First Light”. My Dad read it first and then urged me to do so as well ...

... and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone that wants some insight into the stresses and strains that Wellum and his fellow pilots were under on a daily basis. In his writing, he is open, frank and inspiring too.

In his late teens and early twenties, Wellum spent much of his time expecting to die (and at times not even caring if he did) and so it is rather fitting that, having survived the war, he went on to have such a long and decent life.

To borrow some sentiment from Winston Churchill, Wellum was one of the few to whom so many of us owed so much. And though we have seen his last light in this world, hopefully it will be burning brightly in the next.

Rest In Peace. 

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