Friday night had him down in London at a testimonial dinner for that great servant of Glamorgan cricket, David Hemp, in the Long Room at Lords. He was, to say the least, embarrasingly excited to be in the greatest of venues surrounded by history (and Dougie Brown's wife in a leopard skin dress was a bonus) and despite his best efforts to force up the various auction prices for David's benefit without actually buying anything he failed miserably. How much tat he bought is not entirely clear, how much cash he spent is.
A fatal dose of jetlag rather finished the night off a touch to early for him but with Nigel picking him up early the next day this was perhaps no bad thing.
Last year the lovely Dennis gave him for his birthday a driving day (Ferrari -v- Porsche) and at last the day had come round. He had managed to persuade Nigel to come with him (and indeed to chauffeur him there) as well as Graham.
Sadly Graham had rather foolishly double-booked with a wedding and his lovely wife was not having any of his excuses so his ticket was, it was thought, a waste of money.
How exciting does a day spent racing Ferraris and Porsches sound? Very. How exciting is the reality? Absolutely none.
Perhaps arriving in a Porsche (and a better one than the one to be used) is not a great way to start but then discovering that the "lap" is two 300 yard straights connected by two hairpins and one gets three laps in each car is a pretty poor middle. Discovering that whilst you are doing this there are another 4 or 5 cars on the "track" of people doing a rally day (which of itself was utter pony - standard Evo 7s with paint jobs goind round the "track") is a shocking end as well.
The rain and biting cold took the shine off as well.
Thoroughly hacked off the two of them called it a day and headed back to Birmingham for a night on the turps with Gay George (Not Actually Gay) and some seriously restorative red "tea" (which appeared to come from wine bottles).
A first class curry was shovelled down before the lovely Dennis joined them and they headed off to Red bar. Drinking a bar out of pink Champers is one thing but drinking that same bar out of Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch (Chambord)
is quite another. Despite their efforts they couldn't quite finish off the last of the Sambucas.Calling it a night at 0430 was probably a wise option
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