Andy's Glasses

Its amazing how fast you can hit the floor. I’d thought that my extensive training in tai chi would have me totally in control of all bodily movements without even thinking about it. We practice ‘falling over’ all the time. How to fall painlessly, how to fall in control and be up again to defend or attack pretty much instantly, how to roll, anything you may need in a fight. But not, apparently, in a fight with a protruding paving stone. So my back foot hit the stone, my front foot having leapt into action that I might catch the really annoying pedestrian lights by Farringdon station that were green and only about 30 yards away and if you miss them you have to wait an horrendously impatient 3 minutes (feels like a fucking hour) before they change again.

And that sudden change in my momentum was like the carpet being pulled out from under me. I just went down. Splattt!!!! as Batman would say. Glasses flying, both knees BANG! onto the concrete, hands out in front. I jumped up (avoiding the karate stance, thought I might appear even more stupid in the circumstances), some nice people offering assistance to the old man, someone else handing me my glasses, another asking as to my wellbeing. Oddly, I was fine. And said so. Thanks very much. You’ve all be really wonderful. And I ran off again and still caught the light change. It happened that quickly. Then I took stock.

Trousers a little dirty but not torn. Good thing. Though both knees smarting. Ah, my right knuckles seem to be bleeding. Quite a lot. Never mind, hold a tissue there. Fine. Well, what a lucky feller I woz.

Then I noticed that my left hand, holding the tissue against my bleeding right, looked and felt a bit odd. The little finger, to be precise. It didn’t behave in the way I’d kind’a known it to behave in the previous 61 years. And it felt funny. Not funny ‘ha-ha’, just odd. A bit numb, a bit painful. At the same time. And was at a very slightly odd angle. But I could wiggle it and bend it so diagnosed it probably wasn’t broken.

But as it got more swollen and everyone at work said it needed an x-ray, I relented and spent a wonderful 2 hours at St Thomas’s hospital. Where it was confirmed that it was luckily neither broken nor dislocated, just badly sprained.

The A & E was actually remarkably brilliant. Ok, it takes time but they are wonderful, efficient and consistently charming and helpful. Even funny. Great people doing the most amazing job imaginable. And often unimaginable.

Happy Thursday, try to stay vertical if at all possible. Trust me, the alternatives are not nice.

A xxxx

Another day, another mass(ish) shooting in America. At YouTube’s hq in California this time. Fortunately (relatively) only 3 people were injured and it wasn’t at a school. This was on a different kind of ‘campus’. A Google campus.

But this shooter was different. This shooter was a woman. A gel. A female. Ya get the drift, I’m sure. The shooter was a ‘she’!

Yet in a world of equal opportunity, why shouldn’t it be? Its actually discriminatory to assume that all mass shooters are men. Or should be men. But really, if women do expect equal pay in the market-place, they need to compete on equal terms. Three people injured represents relatively low productivity for a ‘mass shooter’. I mean, 3 people shot is just a spilled beer on a Friday night in Tennessee. Its just a row over a parking space in Downtown Tallahassee.

Would you expect woman shooters to be neater? Clean up afterwards?

2 people were shot here on Monday night. Separate incidents but it made the headlines. In the States it probably wouldn’t even make the news. Done by a man or a woman.

But maybe there is change in the air. Because of the recent marches across America, the youth are protesting loudly and clearly about gun laws. And if for ‘youth’ you read ‘voters soon’ then at some point even the most retarded of NRA-funded Republicans must start to take note. As was noted on the marches, the right to bear (ridiculous, military-grade, automatic) weapons is more important than the right of children to be safe at school.

Some day… and then there’s just the small matter of the 320 million guns already in circulation out there.

More importantly, Liverpool play Man City tonight in the Champions League quarter final, first leg. And that is a mouth-watering prospect. The two most attacking teams in the country, the highest goal-scorers, the biggest… whatever. And whilst City might appear to have the slight advantage that they can often manage to defend at the same time, something slightly lacking in the Scousers (Scousers: Mo Saleh, Manio Sade, Roberto Firmino…), it promises to be wonderful.

Though I’m still drooling over Dele Alli’s first goal on Sunday. Even though Ronaldo scored with a wonderful bicycle kick last night. And I thought… nah, Dele’s better.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Lila was born on April 1st 2017. Later that day Spurs beat Burnley. And subsequently went on a Lila-inspired run that was simply awesome. Lila’s presence not only provided me with a new obsession, the family with a new toy and everyone else with the joy of a new baby, but created a new attitude at Tottenham Hotspur which lead us to finish second in the league last year.

So this year, on her first birthday, we really needed to emphasise not only her continued influence, but how far she has taken her team, with a little help from Mauricio Pochettino and a lot of breast milk.

Such was the setting for her birthday tea yesterday afternoon. At my house. And the tv was on simply because she has two 6 year-old, football-obsessed cousins who needed to see their team in the biggest game of the century. Otherwise we’d never do such a thing with guests around, even if 15 out of the 25 were die-hard Spurs fans. Not proper.

If you haven’t seen the statistics then you may not know that we hadn’t won at Chelsea for 27 years. The longest ‘haven’t won at-‘ run in football. That Chelsea always come back to win, whatever happens before. That the gods of football seem to abandon Spurs in one of the few grounds where gods are too intimidated to… errr… tread? float?? whatever gods do.

So the scene was set. And the one good thing about horrible records like that above is that at some point they simply have to get broken. Law of averages; balance of probabilities, chimps with typewriters, it just has to happen sometime. And what better time.

Chelsea went ahead in the first half. They didn’t deserve to, based on the run of play and the moral necessitude, but life’s not always fair. So just before half time a miracle occurred and Christian Eriksen scored a wondergoal to tie things up at the break.

Then we ate things. Lots of things. Drank more tea, lit the candles on Lila’s first ever birthday cake, stuffed our faces with everything except bread and had 15 minutes of edible insanity.

At about the hour mark Dele Alli scored (in my mind, and those of several others assembled) the goal of the season. A perfect 40 yard pass from Eric Dier which Dele beautifully pulled down with one little touch of his boot. With his next touch he slotted the ball inside the near post with a calm, assured confidence and level of skill that told all his recent detractors to simply fuck off. It was a thing of beauty. Greatly appreciated and admired by the Chelsea fans nearby.

His next goal came just 4 minutes later and was more the result of a team effort that was in excess of that shown by Chelsea, who were given ample opportunities to clear the ball but the Spurs players got there first every time. Which culminated in Dele very coolly slotting home.

At which point those assembled in my lounge let out a collective shout so loud and so strong that any normal baby would have burst out crying. In fact even our supernatural baby did so. Though whether this was due to the shock and noise of just the sheer emotion of Spurs being 3-1 up at Chelsea, we’ll never know. She was taken and comforted, we just went crazy bat-shit mental. Oh and worrying that there were still over 20 minutes left to play.

But we needn’t have feared. Chelsea had lost their sparkle, Spurs defence was monstrously good and it ended 1-3 to MY team.

What a birthday present for Lila. She got loads of presents, lots of fuss and 6 points for her team, effectively.

Ahhhhh, happiest Easter Monday

A xxxx

Lila is one year old today. How’d that even happen? One minute she’s a little pink soft thing and then suddenly… she’s a little pink soft thing. But one that crawls, eats, walks (with a LOT of help), points, grabs, gives you things, chews up the world and has a world of ‘character’, as they do. Its amazing. And she’s funny. Well I think so. Endlessly funny. Once she gets the whole ‘gravity’ thing, once she gets a grip of ’cause & effect’, that’ll change things a bit, but for now, Happy Birthday baby.

Meanwhile, on the day when the Times found a website, with 400,000 Corbyn devotees, that is a cesspit of anti-Semitic, holocaust-denying, anti-Isreal, ‘death-to-the-jews’ type rhetoric, I’d like to wish all the victims a happy Passover. This website, which doubtless Jezza and Johnny will claim they had nothing to do with, it just bears their names in the group title, but they probably ‘didn’t know’ about is the most evil thing yet about our Opposition Party in Government. So in protest, I’m going to share with you a little poem I wrote the other day. I was ‘commissioned’ for our Passover Seder, at which ‘the story’ is told every year, to tell the tale of ‘The Wandering Jew’. A phrase I’d heard but knew nothing about. Fortunately Wikepaedia knew lots.

It was way back when in biblical times, if you will believe,
Harry Kane and Abel, Adam and his lovely Eve.

But it wasn’t all Gardens of Eden, if you know what I mean
Living under the Romans wasn’t even Willesden Green

Like Jesus walking up a hill, on his back a great wooden cross
“Look at ‘im” said a nearby jew, “must’a really upset his boss.”

Jesus looked a’flame with anger, seething, could hardly speak
Not like previous times when he just turned the other cheek.

Then he found his voice and cursed this Jew to forever wander and roam
never to have a roof over his head, never to live in a home

And this for all eternity, at least til the second coming
and as the first was yet to occur the timescale was truly stunning

Hence the jew, a cobbler he was by trade,
set off on his travels, his very long future now completely unmade.

He now had two names though, if that was any consolation,
he was the wandering jew and the eternal jew, both in total damnation.

His tale would endure right down the years, in books and stories told
cropping up in every Christian country both new and indeed old.

But never, it must be said, with sympathy or any understanding
Always reviled, always hated and cursed, his smell notwithstanding.

The legend of the wandering jew thus was to subtly change
to a metaphor for resentment and hate, just like Julian Assange.

“ERE” they’d yell, “I’ve just seen the wandrin’ jew”, but of course, in Russian or Polish or Czech
“Let’s get him now, kick him to shit for wot ‘e done to Jesus; what the heck!!”

“Ok Igor, which way’d he go and what’s he bloody look like?”
“Ya can’t miss him, black hat, long beard, looks really like any old kike.”

Why did Jesus curse this man, lacking his normal genteel, gentile compassion?
Instead merely setting him up for often and royal thrashing?

Maybe Jesus was a Corbynite, filled with that Momentum hate
for the religion he rejected back then, but Christ, its never too late.

Provenance unknown. Circa 57ad

Happy Easter Sunday/Passover day 2

A xxxx

When we arrived in Exeter, Swindon, Loughborough or wherever, the canvassers were dropped off to try and get some leads. So the closers were done for the day. Well, until the evening when their work started in earnest. Or in ‘earning’ as was more appropriate. We were all self-employed and paid totally on commission. No sales, no money. And as the closers received the lion’s share, they had to pay for their canvassers’ accommodation too. So they would book themselves in to the nearest big, posh, 4/5 star hotel in the area, flashier the better, then look for the cheapest boarding house hovel in which to place their lowlife canvassers. Just the way it was. They felt like a million dollars, we felt like Oliver Twist. C’est la vie.

These ‘closers’ (until my ‘promotion’, obvs) were serious characters. None of them over 23, all living with their parents and yet earning a fortune. So they bought cars. Half had Triumph TR6s or Stags, the standard flash-boy toys of the age. A couple had Jags, one had a Lambourghini. I kid you not. The guy was semi-literate, couldn’t add up 2 whole numbers under 10, but could sell stars of David to Momentum.

Then Graham lost his driving licence for a month for speeding. Oh dear. Hard to get where ya need to get and make your appointments in out-of-the-way housing estates without wheels. So he asked me if I would drive for him. But I was Gary’s canvasser and I was quite good, so he didn’t want to let me go. No problem; Gary & Graham would work together every week, I’d still work for Gary but drive Graham around too. In his brand new, magenta Triumph Stag, marked only with his personalised vanity number plate. And I was well paid for this ‘extra service’.

So on the first Monday of the new arrangement I picked up Graham, went to the office where we acquired up Graham’s new canvasser and left for Sheffield. Gary and Graham went together in Gary’s car and I followed with Kim. Who was gorgeous. I certainly wouldn’t slam any doors on Kim. Oh no.

When we arrived, Graham told me to go find a cheap hotel. Which I didn’t. I found a ‘nice’ but reasonable hotel instead for Kim and I to board at his expense. Canvassers always shared rooms. Cheaper that way. Which was sometimes horrible, but on this occasion didn’t seem to pose such a problem. And they had no twin rooms, only doubles. Oh dear.

So I’m 17 years old, driving round in a fantastic super-car (of its day) and from Monday to Friday I’m living with my midweek-wife. I was almost surprised that they gave me a cheque every week. I’d have paid them.

I duly became a ‘closer’ and left after the intended 6 months. And bought myself a brand new Mini (proper, old-type, REAL Mini) with the proceeds of my immoral (so the world later thought) earnings. Ahhhh, but those were the days… no standards of any description. Wonderful.

Happy Saturday/chag sameach

A xxxx

I took a gap yaar in 1973. Ok, I flopped in my A-levels and decided to take a year out rather than stay at school and repeat the year like a rather beautiful retard. 6 months of working then 6 months devoted to study. That was the plan. As we know, man plans, God laughs. So I needed to find a job. Which wasn’t hard as I’d always had Saturday jobs, since I was about 14 (fucking slave labour, children working, Corbyn would never stand for it, even with the ‘union for underage workers’). But that summer, to earn a bit of holiday money I started work for a local double glazing company. On the grounds that everyone who worked there seemed to have so much money. They lived a ‘Premiership lifestyle’ even though the Premiership wouldn’t exist for 18 years. Flashy cars, expensive clothes, nightclubbing, fancy restaurants (Indian AND Chinese!!)

So I started as a ‘canvasser’. This was the lower caste of the Double Glazing world. The scum. The unworthy. But how you start and how you ‘learn’. To eventually become a ‘closer!’ They’re the deal-doers, the salesmen. And it worked like this.

Monday morning we all met in the company office and every closer would take their canvasser, or pick one if they didn’t have. Good looking girls were particularly sought because they are great at knocking on doors and not having them slammed so quickly, and also because all the selling took place in far away places (Swindon, Nottingham, Cheltenham, Ipswich, anywhere they have housing estates with horrible, regular, easy-fit windows) and you might get lucky. And off you’d go. Always in pairs of closers and pairs of canvassers otherwise you get bored. We’d arrive at our destination housing estate and the canvassers would be deposited there. As a lowlife, you work long hours. From about 1.30 to 5, maybe 6. And we’d be knocking on doors saying “we’re conducting a survey about people’s views and opinions on double glazing…” even though that was an absolute lie because we couldn’t give a shit what anyone thought about it we just wanted them to buy it. And if they answered positively, you offered them a ‘once in a lifetime chance’ of having some over-paid, over-sexed, doped-up, long-haired London flash-boy screech up later in his Jag when hubby gets home to force you into signing some documents that would have you paying for something you never knew you needed or wanted, for the next 5 years.

Cynicism aside, it was actually a fantastic product and did all the things we know double glazing can help with. It was just a minor matter of convincing people that they were wrong not to want it. Even though most had never even heard of it. But that really was the closer’s job. The canvasser just got ‘leads’; people who said, ‘yeah, I might consider that’. If the lead was from a housewife, particularly a dim one, it was virtually worthless as the husband, 9 times out of 10 would probably not even open the door for the appointment. If it was a man-lead it might be ok, but the dream was to get a ‘Mr & Mrs lead’. They were… not priceless, they often came at a big price, but to the couple. At least the closer would get into the house to do his stuff. And the canvasser would often accompany him in order to learn the skill-set required to eventually gain promotion to that coveted position. Skills like cockiness, ruthlessness, pushy gobbiness and slimy slickness. I was a natural, I’m sad to admit. Well, in fact its a bit unnatural, but only if you have a conscience of any sort. So no problem there then.

We billed the closers at our company ‘advertising managers’ so people (ok, so really stupid and naïve people) wouldn’t think they were being sold to. And they pitched it as a ‘buy-NOW’ offer, only available tonight, as part of a ‘campaign’ so they’d get it at a reduced cost. Which they did. You priced up all the windows, added in the other stuff required and arrived at a total. Say £400. Then you add half as much again, making £600, known as ‘the moody price’. That all done in secret, obviously once you’d measured up. And you sell them the windows, then, like a fucking miracle, before their very eyes, reduce that down to what it would have been without all the subterfuge. But that was the drama, that was the pitch, that was how you could insist of a decision that night, and no other. And it worked. Often as not. Particularly in Swindon. I make no judgments.

Essentially, we were selling a great product which would reduce heat loss (long before that became fashionable), eliminate noise and increase the value of their home. And we were selling it at a very reasonable price. With the… errrr… discount. But the sales pitch, as later featured extensively on every consumer affairs programme ever made, was rather dodgy. But was that way just to force a decision. To eliminate the ‘I wanna think about it’ get-out which is a human default position.

To be continued…

Happy Easter/Passover/Bank Holiday Friday

A xxxx

Anti-semitism in the Labour party; the gift that keeps giving.

We all thought it was over. We pitched up in Parliament Square on Monday night, risked starvation as we stood in the fresh air with no buffet for almost 35 minutes!! and then later Jeremy C made his abject apology in all sincerity and heart-feltiness possible. “I’m sorry!!” he said. “I caused upset, I was insensitive, and now it will stop. I missed the point of that horrible mural, just didn’t realise that depicting a bunch of Jews in a monstrous way was about being Jewish. Never caught on that all those holocaust deniers I ‘liked’ on facebook, all those blood libalists I cheered, all those calling for the destruction of Israel that I had tea with, I just never realised that they were ‘anti-semitic’, so I’m very sorry, it won’t happen again”.

Its what’s known as the ‘thick-as-a-brick’ plea. I’m so fucking stupid I never realised that abusing Jews was anti-semitic in any significant way.

But its ok, because he’s going to stop it. I hope he’s not using Shami Chakrabarti’s indicators of where the problem lies in his party, because she couldn’t find ANY evidence of anti-semitism whatsoever. Which now makes her an accomplice in the ‘thick-as-a-brick’ and ‘blind-as-a-bat’ defence. And also makes her totally unreliable, unbelievable and untrustworthy. Just another Corbynite puppet with zero credibility.

So that’s great then. Anti-semitism is over in the Labour party, Momentum, everywhere, even in my house. Job done.

Before the assembled masses had even left Parliament Square on monday there were already tweets proclaiming that ‘the Jews had made an issue of so-called anti-semitism just to try and destabilise Corbyn’. Bastard, yank-loving, imperialist, fascist Jews!

Today Momentum have started planning the deselection of all the Labour MPs who spoke at monday’s rally, starting with David Lammy. Because he ‘agreed with the right wingers’ of a certain faith.

I’m packing a bag, just in case. And taking Lila with me.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

This is almost a first for any government of MY country. A tax increase that is remarkably clever. And trust me, I’m no ‘I WANT TO PAY MORE!!’, Melvyn Bragg type, neo-Corbynista champagne socialist. But this is clever.

They’re making road tax a ‘flat rate’ of £140 a year, for all cars, including, for the first time, all hybrid vehicles. Previously exempt, these vehicles get to join the road tax club with the rest of us. Fully electric cars (assuming such things have a zero CO2 emission rate) are still exempt.

The good news is that your Ferrari, or 1957 Merc 300 SL is only going to pay 140 quid too, whereas they currently pay a lot more because they spew thousands of litres of noxious shit into the atmosphere every time the door opens.

I don’t like tax, particularly in the UK where we pay more than any other nation (a statistic true in my mind if not actually valid elsewhere), but I find it mindless when the raising or implementation of a form of taxation actually provides the government with less money than they had before. Like raising the ‘stamp duty’ when you buy a house. They raised it sky high (where it still remains), counting all that extra revenue they’d inherit as a consequence, and people just stopped moving house so much. So they now make far less in total than they did when the tax was lower. Which falls well into the ‘WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT????’ category of fiscal stupidity.

Similarly, when they raise income tax too much (1% is too much, 25% too little), they end up with less money in the national coffers. Because very rich people are mobile and can just ‘move away’ and pay tax in a more friendly environment, and others get much more creative about how their pay and income is structured. There’s always a way.

But putting road tax on hybrids actually makes sense. Because if everyone in the country suddenly got ‘green’ and dumped the old Jag to replace it with a Prius, environmentalists would pop open the (free-range, organic, eco-friendly, zero-emission) champagne but there’d be not a penny of road tax coming in. Which would be a massive loss. So the government are ‘hedging’. If the uptake on hybrids increases, they won’t lose the tax revenue.

Alternatively, people may now think; well if there’s no tax gain, why am I driving a shitty fucking hybrid when I could drive a proper car? It’ll be interesting to see if hybrids maintain their ‘zero rating’ on the London congestion charge. We can get back to talking ‘zero to sixty’ rather than ‘zero emission’. Just sayin’.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

There’s something horrible about cheating. Let me re-phrase that; there’s everything horrible about cheating. No redeeming features whatsoever. Because, quite literally, no-one loves a cheat. Not even me. When my beloved football stars take an unnecessary ‘dive’, I hate it, it reflects on ME for some reason I haven’t yet worked out, and I accept the communal guilt by association. Yet a dive actually, strictly, almost ‘legally’ falls under that wonderful umbrella of convenience: ‘gamesmanship’. Like swearing at opponents, slagging off their sisters, trash-talk, ‘sledging’, whatever you call it. Gamesmanship.

But cricket is different. Always has been. Taking its roots from a bunch of upper-class aristocrats in Top Hats and tail-coats, it was always a game for gentlemen. To such an extent that it entered the dictionary as a metaphor for any form of dubious, immoral or questionable behaviour being described as ‘not cricket’. Boxing had the Marquis of Queensbury, cricket had the rest of the hoi-poloi. All of them. To ensure that their game not only retained its exemplary standards of behaviour and sportsmanship, but set a standard for the whole of society.

Then they showed the Australians how to play. Big mistake.

The biggest mistake was, rather annoyingly, that they were quite good at playing it. But really, to entrust the world’s poshest sport into the grubby hands of a bunch of criminally-descended street urchins was always destined to lower the entire tone of the game. The nation whose cultural contribution to the world is ‘Neighbours’. Quite honestly, if it wasn’t for Margot Robbie and Kylie, I’d wash my hands of the entire nation.

But it is what it is. You can’t turn the clock back. We can only deal with the fact that cheating has occurred, albeit in the most wonderfully stupid, ‘smile-for-the-camera’ way, and has probably been occurring for quite some while. Its institutionalised. We just need to see how deep it goes. Like the Russian athletics drug programme.

Went to Parliament Square to protest last night. And protest I did. Against the anti-semitism in the Labour Party. Was a great event. Though due to the traffic and the terrible sound system I could only hear one speaker of the 3 or 4 Labour MPs (obviously not Cowardly Corbyn) who stood up to tell of their shame on behalf of their party. But sad to say I’ve never been to a ‘do’ with so many Jews and been offered nothing to eat. No bagels. Not a solitary Danish. Nothing. And trust me; I looked.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

If you’re not an unrelenting petrol-head, or if you drive a Prius on ‘ecological grounds’ or are any other form of tosser or even a save-the-planet eco-warrior who will only get on a bus if its fully electric, won’t eat meat and name your children ‘White Rhino’ or ‘Cherry Blossom’, then look away now. This is not for you. Because on Saturday I spent the most wonderful 20 minutes imaginable (other than with Lila, obvs) in a car showroom.

Well, it used to be a car showroom, they sold BMWs and Minis. And its a 10 minute walk from home. It was called ‘Hexagon of Highgate’ because it was within a short bus-ride of Highgate. And Highgate apparently sounds better than ‘East Finchley’ where the place actually is, on the high road, approximately 25 yards from the tube station bearing the same name. And they moved the showroom into Highgate proper (probably trades description issues) and decided to put the bosses collection of ‘vintage’ cars in the old building. Which is a really fab and ultra-modern building, now housing their ‘collectable’ car sales unit.

Because anyone can ‘collect’ old cars like they have, as long as they have several million pounds to spare. Its that easy. But they don’t know who the buyers are from the browsers. So I walked across the forecourt, upon which sit their used cars. All of which, about 30 of them, are Porsche 911s. All 2/3 years old and 25 of them are red, white or blue. Looks quite amazing. If you want a used Porsche, which I don’t.

Because in pride of place in the window sits the car above. A cream-coloured, 1957 Mercedes 300 SL. Possibly the most beautiful car ever made. The first ever sighting of ‘gull-wing doors’. But its not about the doors. Its about the line of the vehicle. Its about the sheer, era-defining elegance, its about over-riders on chrome bumpers, its about the most gorgeous fucking hub-caps ever. It was never about ‘drag coefficients’, it stuck 2 fingers up to ‘economy’ and no-one gave a shit about the planet in 1957. It also looks in the same condition as the day it was born. Immaculate and totally original. Yours for £1.2 mil. “Oh Mel… please!!!… can’t we just… ANYTHING! JUST LET ME HAVE IT!!!!

But no. We ventured further in. I’ll just say it once so as not to repeat: every car is totally pristine and without any suggestion of a flaw. The Ferrari Dino, my favourite of about 5 prancing horse jobs they have there. The Aston DB4, driven in a race by Stirling Moss, the DB5, the XK120, the XK150 all wonderful and amazing. The Ferrari California convertible, 1961 is a bit of a bargain at 10 mil.

“Can I help you at all?” inquired the very nice man who hadn’t decided if we were eccentric super-rich people or just really scruffy plebs. “Yes, I said, you can. Follow me round and wipe up after I’ve drooled over these cars, would you?”

I’m going back to steal one. Haven’t finalised the plans yet, but its got to happen. They probably wouldn’t even miss it.

Happy Monday

A xxxx