Goodwood Festival of Speed

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Russ and I had an excellent time at the Festival of Speed yesterday, despite the Mazda giving up 1 minute into the journey... the mighty Taxi was quickly brought into action though so no time was lost.

There's a special feeling at the festival. Not only can you get up close to some truly historic kit, but these priceless machines are then thrashed up the hill in a senseless display of noisy, wheel spinning, fuel-wasting excess. It's fantastic!
Look, dragsters too! These were next to an exhibition of future car technology, and it was all sickening battery-powered eco tat. I had to get out of there quick, before I was invited to have a go on the green-driving simulator. It made me feel DIRTY. There were a number of F1 cars, but none of them current. They no longer race up the hill, instead they just have fun lighting up the tyres and driving them on the rev limiters - health & safety perhaps?
Those bales don't look like they'll stop much, do they? The Wacky Racers weren't going very quickly (Dick Dastardly's car appears to be '80s Metro-based so he was lucky to be moving at all), but some of the cars were flying - the TWR-Jaguar Le Mans car got to the top in 47 seconds!
The bales do seem to work though. This is John Cleland's Cavalier after understeering off this very corner.
I was spending like a millionaire, with fancy grandstand tickets and 2 cans of £1.40 millionaires orange pop. We even went for a spin in this helicopter. It made me feel ill, but I couldn't afford to vomit up my millionaire's £4.70 bacon sarnie else I'd be hungry later.
I was very popular with the ladies. Everywhere I went they were all over me, perhaps I had the look of a divorced dad about me. Unfortunately they all wanted to sign me up for Sky TV, or a beach buggy or other crazily expensive impulse buys. Do I look like a man who can be parted from his pennies by a pretty face? No, I don't. I've got a ruddy, beetroot-red Norfolk face. I look like a scarecrow. And scarecrows only want a cup'o'tea and a nice slice o' cake.

I like this, it looks like something I might make in the garage:


As I'm not really a millionaire, there was no helicopter to take me home. The boy and I had to tolerate almost 2 hours of delays getting out of the car park, then police roadblocks. I was pretty glad we had taken the Taxi, it's slushbox was most welcome in the jams and prevented me going Grand-Theft-Auto-style ballistic with other road users.

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