PRICELESS

[Tony_C]

Most of you will recall the Credit Card advertising along the lines of (for me, a Liverpool fan )….. ‘Ticket to the match £35….. beer at halftime (Carlsberg or Carlsberg!) £7…….. Seeing that smug smirk knocked off the face of arrogant tw@t Jose Mourinho……. "Priceless!"…………..

On the same theme I’ve got one of my own to share… which has been primarily triggered by the recent passing of Willy Cave but also by the feeling that the Forum appears to have currently lost the fun ‘feel good threads’?…….. Sure many of you also can chip in with your own ‘Priceless moments’, TR related or not.

 

Preamble……. 

Like most of the momentous happenings in my life, this was not planned and should not have ever happened….. 

 

I was having a beer with fellow ‘Navigator’ , Malcolm McKay, towards the end of a particularly disastrous Tulip Rally; both of us sat doubting the true parentage of our respective drivers..

 

It had all begun with such promise…… 50 years special anniversary rally into the newly opened up FSU / East Germany, I was in the best car, ‘3VC’ ex-works TR4, with the best driver, Neil Revington………. What could possibly go wrong??……….. That’s a story for another day, suffice to say; just about everything that could have gone wrong did! (Much of it was certainly my fault but,  in my defence, story was "the dammed commies had set up all the road directions to ensure that any invaders from the West would get lost "…… which worked effectively against all of us fancying our chances from the UK!)

 

Up until then Neil and I had done a few Tulips, huge learning curve but we had always punched above our weight…. This time we would take it seriously and give it a real go…!?

 

Now, grumbling away with Malcolm, Realising I was never going to get my head around ‘Regularities’…… If you don’t know where you are or going, how can you expect to get there to the nearest second??…. Confidence shattered I was ready to stop all this rallying malarkey (Also very much aware I had to get back to family, work, mortgage payments etc… and plenty of other hobbies/ sports I was reasonably ok at and within my comfort zone) ….. just goes to show how low we both were feeling, cheap trick to be moaning about our respective drivers who are both very accomplished talented characters (albeit with the odd eccentricities and foibles that all the folks really worth knowing have)….

 

……Then Malcolm mentioned he had an entry for the Scottish Malts Rally starting the next week that he wouldn’t/couldn’t now do for a number of reasons including not having a co-driver…… Bingo!…. OK but, "just for fun, the result doesn’t matter…"

 

The ‘Winning Malts’ - in brief 

We did it ‘just for fun’ (at the beginning anyway until we went progressively to the top of the leaderboard) we had fun, we worked as a team, we had a basic side screen TR that was (more than) a match for Ferrari, Astons, Jag’s and any of the ‘exotica’ or wannabes on the Highland tracks……. And - God bless you John Brown / Willy Cave - for someone who was traumatised by ‘Regularities’ , I found I could master ‘Jogularities’……. Given the timing everything ‘clicked’!

 

Arriving in Skye the majority of competitors made a block booking in the poshest restaurant. However, I fancied fish and chips with a pint down by the harbour, here we bumped into Willy - Marshalling on this one - Fred Bent and Colin Francis, both (as usual) also fighting hard to win…. It was a brilliant spontaneous evening with great chat, memories and banter; clearly these guys had great respect and friendship for each other but, interesting to quietly note, this did not stop them probing away for any perceived weakness that could be exploited over the remaining Rally stages. Yep Happy to see (and somewhat shocked to be a party to) these attacks and counter ploys….. it’s actually everywhere in life if you are looking and aware; I once saw a lawyer reduce his opponent to jelly across the courtroom, not by his outstandingly deep legal knowledge of the case law ….but by getting into his head the idea that his shoes looked scruffy!?

 

Fish n Chips £2.50…… Tesco ‘3 for 2 wine offer’ £7.50………. Being treated like a ‘real’ Rally navigator and genuine competition threat in that company…………. ‘PRICELESS !’

 

 

RIP Willy Cave

&

RIP David Redwood - (All round top bloke and member of our all conquering TALISKER TROPHY Winning Best Marque Team ‘Sidescreeners’)

[Bfg]

  ..excellent