Tag Archives: Vintage cars

Dean Village Show the Last of the Summer Wine

Not in Notting Hill ~ Thank Heavens!

23 September 2023 ~ Dean Village Show the Last of the Summer Wine

Whilst London’s Notting Hill Carnival, which should have been banned years ago, was erupting into its usual frenzy of violence, with, as the Daily Mail* depicted, odious-looking behoodied things running amuck in the streets brandishing knives and machetes, we, I am happy to say, were over the hills and far away, somewhere on the brighter side of proper English culture.

Resisting the temptation to allow ourselves to be dragged down by the Daily Mail’s depressing but not delusional strapline, ‘ … Britain Now Feels Like a Third World Country*’, but pondering on what Plod will do in the unlikely event they apprehend the Notting Hill Carnival misfits (‘Come on now, don’t be naughty. How about a cup of tea. Let’s sit and discuss your problem.’), we escaped the gruesome subspace that London has become by joining a lot of nice English people at one of the county’s late ‘summer shows’.

Dean Village Show the Last of the Summer Wine

You may recall in a previous post on ‘summer shows’ that I happened to remark upon the tragic disappearance of the greatest big band leader the world has ever known, Glenn Miller. In this post I postulated that at the time of his disappearance he may have had in his pocket a list of English garden fetes to which he was rather partial. It cannot be confirmed, but neither can it be dismissed.

The whereabouts of such a list, if indeed there ever was one, deserves a trial by academia. I am assured by its ambiguity that for someone craving a PhD it would give them something to waffle about for the three small years it takes to secure a job for life within the ivory-tower equivalent of an overpaid Alice’s Wonderland.

As for us real folks, who have ‘to move those microwave ovens … got to shift those colour TVs’, the historical mishap that was Glenn Miller’s fate and the mishap of the present, as signified by the mud-hut happenings in Britain’s capital city, which will themselves one day be judged by history, if today’s generation can get off their phones long enough to realise what the establishment has in store for them (I hear the sound of sheep!) were insufficient reasons not to struggle into the Aston ~ jumping in and out of it is not as feasible as once it was when we were twenty years younger ~ and go tootling classically off to yet another local village fete, which prefers, by academic licence, to rebrand itself as a ‘summer show’.

As we were pulling out of the gate on the spoked wheels of the Aston, our senses were regaled with the inspirational sight of a lady with whom we are acquainted (She works behind the bar (but only on Mondays and Wednesdays) of a pub we know and to which we go.). She was trumping past on a vintage tractor, with a cute little trailer in tow. She was, and in this we were not mistaken, off to the same show as us.

It is hardly surprising that here in the sticks, agricultural relics command the same respect and attention as vintage and classic cars. True village folk, as distinct from Johnny-come-latelys, have all had a taste of agriculture sometime in their lives, and these days even women, when not playing at football, are trying their hand at driving tractors. And some, it must be said, appear more suited to this task than butching it up on a football pitch. Just remember not to get too close when you are behind them and, when they are coming directly towards you, always give them a very wide berth.

The last of the summer wine

One of the lasting joys of my personal summer, this summer, give or take local garden fetes and the odd summer show or two, is the privilege it bestowed upon me to witness from my bedroom window the impressive extent and degree to which British agriculture has progressed.

It is years since I participated in the yearly rural ritual of ‘bringing in the sheathes’, and, needless to say, things have moved on. The good old days, so called, characterised by pitchforks, sore, blistered, split and chafed hands, jumpers out at elbow and trousers out at arse, tied at the waist with bailer twine, have gone to be replaced by farm machinery the likes of which is so fantastic that my generation could never imagine it outside of the realms of science fiction.

Young farm operatives now drive these fabulous machines, not crusty, gnarled old farm-hands. They cruise around in comparative luxury ~ fitted cabs, music systems, heaters for the winter, air conditioning in summer and everything satellite navigated. Sporting the latest haircuts, trendy country-wear jerkins and smart regulation high-vis jackets, the young who work on Britain’s farms often look better turned out than the lords and masters for whom they work. “Where will it all end?!” I ask. It’s new, but it’s not Notting Hill!

The farm machinery of today, the combine harvesters and the tractors, are vastly larger than they used to be and so much smoother in their operation ~ their engines no longer ‘chug’, they glide. They are also more sophisticated, even excessively comfortable; capable of getting things done in a fraction of the time it would have taken us to do them using our often second-hand, tired, worn out, prone to breakdown, cronky and battered old kit.

Good examples of how much things have changed is the paper sack stuffed with straw, which we used to cushion the bumpy ride and to prevent our arses from icing up on the notorious raw metal tractor seats, and how through the winter months we went, chugging and bouncing across the plough, in gloves, jumpers, jackets, top coats and with balaclavas wrapped round our heads. Men were men in those days and boys expected to do a man’s work, often without so much as a thank you let alone a proper wage and, if you were really unlucky, as frequently we were, a boot up the arse for your troubles. It was angry farmers who ruled the earth then; ‘uman rights and children’s rights and the global-warming industry were just a twinkle in the collective eye of your preposterous liberal-lefty.

A better example of ‘how things have changed’, that is to say a less emotive one, is captured in a photograph, taken from my bedroom window, which juxtaposes yesteryear’s farm implements with their plush and powerful modern counterparts.

At today’s garden fete, sorry, I meant to say summer show, I would be given the chance to see tractors pre-dating my farming years as well as those that were contemporary to the time I spent on the farm. In other words, I would be looking back in awe, and not with a little disbelief, at tractors old and classic which, only the blink of an eye ago, were objects to be marvelled at in spite of their myriad defects. To us they were acceptable; we didn’t know anything else.

Fortunately, time softens sensibility and mellows troublesome memories, turning what was once a bitch to work with into something we never imagined it could be, an icon of nostalgia, deserving of affection bordering almost on abject reverence.

To one side of these veterans of the land, these old tractors which were lined up on the field like so many members of the Home Guard, stood something cute and dinky. We had met its owner the night before in the local village pub, who, in response to my revelation that I had in my youth one just like his, corrected me forthwith, saying whilst it was certainly true that Dinky had made a road-roller, the toy was not the full-sized model parked outside the front of the pub. His was a mark ‘blah blah’ with an ‘oops, ay now and what-do-you-call-it?’ and what is more with an engine capacity that was ‘fart de-lah-de-lah-lah-lah!) … The trouble with vintage vehicle owners is they really know their stuff.

It was a similar situation when I accosted the owner of a Ford Zodiac Mark IV. He had no difficulty rattling off the engine capacity and build, top speed, fuel consumption and a whole lot of other technical and historical stuff, including, I was amazed to learn, that the reason, as I had stated, ‘you don’t see many of these’ was that in spite of the hundreds of thousands of Mark IV Zodiacs produced less than 300 have survived!

My uncle ~ let’s call him ‘L’ ~ owned a Mark IV Zodiac back in the 1970s. When I expressed an interest in it, he told me he bought it because (a) it holds a lot of ‘stuff’ and (b) it can accelerate faster from a standing start than the average police car.

At his funeral a few years ago, I was walking with my mother behind my uncle’s coffin as the pallbearers bore it from church to cemetery when suddenly, from around the corner, a police car hoved into view.

Casting a wry glance at the car, I heard my mother whisper, “I’m afraid you’re just too late”.

Dean Show 2023 ~ Fast Cars

The Ford Zodiac Mark IV was not the only now classic car that could outrun Britain’s rozzers. During the 1960s, the villains’ vehicle of choice was more often than not the Jag. Not only were Jags fast, they were also incredibly flash, seeming to possess for the raffish and the rakish just the right combination of tasteful class, wheel appeal and polished disreputable charm.

A Jag Mark II was with us at the show today, as was one of the 1960s’ most iconic vehicles, the unmistakeable E-type Jag, a masterpiece of curvaceous chic, both the hardtop and convertible versions. Also on display was a 1970’s Mustang, a Citroen from the 1930s’, a lovely coach-built red Rolls Royce and umpteen variations on the nippy sports car models which, individually and collectively, left an irrepressibly glamorous signature on the 1960s and 1970s.

So, where and how did it all go wrong? Whatever happened to classic car design, with its emphasis on strikingly different, instantly recognisable and once seen never forgotten? Whatever happened to walnut dashboards, numerous dials, must-click switches, leather seats and glittering chrome. Wherever the good times went, the good cars must have gone with them.

It was all too much. We decided to explore the stalls, were disappointed when we could not find one catering in old-fashioned junk and swung away in protest for my brother to try his luck on the tombola. (Who on earth is Tom Bola?)

At a previous event, which had been called a garden fete, not show, my brother had had the good fortune to win a bottle of wine on the tombola and a bottle of brandy in rapid succession. Would his luck hold out today? Did it heck as like!

“I said it would be a tin of beans, and it was!” he matter-of-facted. But the little spin of clairvoyancy in which he had couched his statement did nothing to hide his deep disappointment. It isn’t winning, it’s playing the game that counts. What a load of old nonsense!

What you lose on the tombola, you might win on the circus skills, and in this respect my brother fared better, I must say remarkably better, in tightrope walking and juggling. Not that this came as a great surprise. There are those who would say that he has walked a tightrope and juggled his way through life. But today it was for real. Admittedly, the tightrope was only two feet off the ground, and he was juggling bean bags not clubs, but I’ve got to hand it to him, I did not need to hand it to him: he succeeded in both endeavours.

One of the supreme joys of attending English garden fetes, and shows, is not the inevitable dog exhibition. To like dug shows, you have first to like dugs. Some don’t.

Today’s dug show was all about gun dogs and the obedience they learn through training, but as most of the bitches were in heat there were one or two near unfortunate incidents which threatened to turn a family show into something rather embarrassing. This was just the excuse we needed to head back to the Aston, drag the folding chairs from the boot and get stuck into the old, packed lunch, which I washed down eagerly with a refreshing pint of English ale.

Picnic over, it was time to circulate; to say hello to people whom you knew, who you knew had been trying all day to avoid you, and to avoid those people you knew, who you knew had been trying to say hello. You don’t understand the rules? It’s a quintessentially ‘English thing’.

No English garden fete or English village show could be considered complete without the proverbial cup of tea and slice of cake. To enjoy it at its best, you should be able to sit outside in the sun under a Panama hat, preferably wearing a day cravat. Such attire is also good for drinking beer in the evening. Consider it done.

Mick Hart expatkaliningrad with Panama hat and beer

And so, another garden fete, sorry, village show, and indeed another garden fete season (with the exception of Riseley show) inevitably came to an end. Whatever it wants to call itself, it had been a pleasant experience, as had all the local garden fetes that I have attended this summer, prompting the reflection that the UK can be an enjoyable place when free of the unwanted enrichment that Sorryarse and his motley crew seem to have forgotten previous British generations did very well without. “Not today, thank you (or any other day!)!”

As we all know, however, the good old days were not all that: there was no woke, no PC, a lack of sexual harassment payouts, certainly nothing LGBT and sadly no global warming to melt the frost on your tractor seat. Nevertheless, when all is said and done (a lot is said but not a lot done) the good old days in hindsight seem a darned sight better, infinitely better in fact, than what we have at present and what is yet to come. You ain’t seen nothing yet, but consolation has it that the reset they have planned for us will not endure for long. Across the political West, pseudo-liberal doctrines have already begun the slow, the painful, the inevitable process of rupture and unravelling. In the long term it will be brutal, but right will prevail as it always does.

In the short term, however, the story will be different. All that will remain to fill the echoing void left by garden fetes, Sunday cricket and good old English pubs will be foreign food stores, Turkish barbers, one or two Indian corner shops (whatever happened to Arkwright?) and, last but by no means least, the never pleasant, totally unnecessary, no-excuse-for-it Notting Hill Carnival.

Be careful what you didn’t wish for.

Now that’s what I call a country fate!

Reference
Daily Mail* [Wednesday August 30, 2023]

Bletsoe Garden Fête in an Aston Martin DB2/4

Bletsoe Garden Fête is just one event on Mick Hart’s enviable social calendar. This year he put away his bicycle clips and went by Aston Martin instead.

2 July 2023 ~ Bletsoe Garden Fête in an Aston Martin DB2/4

Among the high-quality merchandise that I am disposing of at present, I happened upon a box full of the 1960s’ educational comic for children Look and Learn.

Opening the pages of these august volumes, I was treated to a compendium of educational articles, some features, others comic strip but all superbly illustrated and all reminding me of the way we were when England was really England.

The content of the magazines reflected the educational ethos of the time, presenting informative articles of a historic, scientific, cultural and practical nature. The scope of the subject matter was world-wide but the emphasis was squarely placed on inculcating the young into appreciating the unrivalled part that England played in the evolution of the civilised world. Topics ranged from famous English people to national passtimes to traditional British games to great events in British history, so that it was impossible not to come away from the magazine instilled and inspirited with a patriotic sense of pride.

It was at that moment that a modern-day version of Look and Learn insinuated itself into my unguarded imagination. There it was saturated with Black Lives Matter, the joys of immigration, LGBTQ+ZX!!&£££, Radio Zelensky, how to adapt your broom cupboard to house an economic migrant, and how to get out of Brexit free. It was also spattered with lots of adverts, just like those we see on TV, which show people from far flung places acting and talking like cloned English persons eating roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with lashings of Bisto gravy. Ahh Bisto. Ahh Bullshit. I’ve always been a green bananas and bread-fruit man myself.

Bread fruit are marvellous. It occurs to me that they are the humane steam-powered alternative to Scotland’s McSporan haggis. I like them, which is more than I can say for cricket. I have never liked cricket, correction, I never liked playing cricket, but whenever I take a turn through the English countryside in the midst of summer the sight of men dressed in their cricketing whites and the sound of leather on willow is most inspiring. BDSM aside, (it’s always gone on in English villages) another revered and quite frankly reassuring English tradition has to be the garden fête, or garden fetty, as my wife liked to call them.

Now that summer is here and the nights are growing whiter, as in gentlemen in their cricketing whites, it is difficult to decide which is the most exciting: men stumping their middle wickets or England’s profusion of garden fêtes.

“It’s come to something,” said my brother, “when all we’ve got to get excited about is the local village garden fête. But this is unfair, if not true. It’s when your calendar has a string of garden fêtes on it and nothing else that you should be worried.

Anyway, not that we have a list of local garden fêtes you understand, but our first fête this year was Bletsoe, to which we would be going in style. My brother had changed his socks, and I had my Russian hat on. Oh yes, and we were also going there in a vintage 1954 classic Aston Martin.

Now, to look at this Aston Martin you might think, ‘Look at the state of that!!’, or you could, as I overheard some chaps saying when we arrived at Bletsoe Garden Fête, “You don’t see many DB2/4s in original condition.” To repaint or not to repaint, that is the ££££ question?

Aston Martin DB2/4

The Aston Martin DB2/4 was produced from 1953-1957. The model shown here is a a four-seater drophead coupé, The engine is a Lagonda straight-6, 2.9 L, providing the vehicle with 140hp and a top speed of 120mph [193km/h]. A DB2/4 Mk I drophead coupé featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds.

The Aston shown here is one of the few to have survived in its original untouched condition. Most Aston connoisseurs argue that the vehicle should not be resprayed but left as it is. The engine has been rebuilt.

Having videoed our trip to the fête from the inside of the Aston, we stopped out front Bletsoe Church to allow Martin to blow a hole through the wall of his wallet and steal a fiver for the entrance fee.

This difficult operation accomplished, but not without some groaning and sighing, we pulled up at the entrance to the field where a young lady asked us, “Are you exhibiting?”

“We’re not,” replied brother Joss, “but he is (pointing to Martin]. He’s got no trousers on?”

The fact that we were exhibiting but still had to pay an entrance fee was a bit rich in my opinion, even if the money was going to a good cause — the vicar’s holiday in St Tropez. But I put it down to the mercenary sign of the times and quickly blamed it on Russia.

The man who took the fiver off us was not the girl on the gate, well who knows what gender anyone is in England nowadays? The fiver took, someone then told us that if we headed in that direction towards the field, someone’s wife will be there to show you where to park.

Another someone said, mention no names, “I bet she isn’t, she’s most likely behind the hedge in the arms of another man!” [That comment loses something in translation, but this is a family blog.] Anyway, there was no one there when we got there, or where we thought we ought to be, so we parked up and jumped out. Actually, we struggled out accompanied by lots of geriatric groans and ‘oo-ahhh!’ noises. Aston Martin DB2/4s are certainly young men’s cars.

We hadn’t been there more than five minutes rubbing Fiery Jack into our joints when three more young men arrived, all driving early 1960s’ Ford Zodiacs. I liked the model that starred in the old 60s’ TV series Z Cars. It was, reputedly, the first 100mph car on the road. That taught the crooks! It did, they all went out and got Jags. As for the pink-outside, pink-inside job (see photo), well what can you possibly say? The owner-driver had even taken the trouble to ensure that the 1960s’ music seemingly coming from the car’s original radio only played hits up to the time that the car was produced and no later.

Once the circulation had come back, we began to circulate. There were a number of stalls in the offing and the first we visited was one that was selling vintage clothes. Nothing they stocked caught my eye and the clothes that caught my brother’s also got caught around his stomach, so we had to pass.

Sitting next to the clothes stall was a man surrounded by treen (look it up!).

“Did you make it all yourself?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “I’ve always been good with my hands.”

The wife of the man whom he said would be there was nowhere to be seen.

Today would be a day when I would meet people that I had not seen for some time ~ those who thought of coronavirus have an awful lot to answer for. The problem was that they all seemed to be faces with no names. You know the situation: “Hello, how are you, er …”

“Yes, I’m alright. How are you, er …?”

“Are you still …?”

“Yes, I am. Are you?”

“To the best of my ability.”

“How’s your wife?”

“I haven’t got one, but I’ve got somebody else’s …”

Wherever was that car-parking woman?

“How’s yours …?”

“Mine’s all right, how’s yours …?”

“Well, its’ been nice speaking to you, er …?”

“You too, er …?”

Exit stage left.

“Who on Earth was that?”

Others, however, were indelibly impressed on my memory, and it was very good to see them. (Their names have been withheld in order to protect our senility.)

After I had had my Pims, Joss his coffee and Martin all the sandwiches, we took a photographic stroll around the pre-war and wartime vehicles. And what an outstanding collection there was! Among them I made a bittersweet discovery: the presence of a Daimler the precursor of the Lanchester.

My friend had a Lanchester. Back in the 1970s, we teenagers used to pub crawl in it. He sold it eventually for 70 quid, and all I’ve got left is the ashtray. If only he had known then what I knew then and never fail to mention every time I see him now.

My brother Joss is on a salad diet. He’s currently eating about 3cwt of lettuce a day, which is probably why he could not resist buying a big sticky chocolate fudge cake from the cheap produce stall. He also found some moisturising cream, which he said was orgasmic ~ I think he meant ‘organic’ ~ but we passed on that all the same, preferring to invest instead in the guarantee of a good dawn chorus — four cheap cans of Heinz Baked Beans.

Mick Hart with Red Rolls Royce at Bletsoe

It was now time for Martin to buy me a drink. He was heading for the ‘bar’ quite nonchalantly when someone mentioned that it was his round and into the grass went his hooves like a donkey. Martin’s wallet is such a hard nut to crack that even the Hatton Garden Mob would think twice before attempting it. Eventually, however, he did cough up, but the experience was so traumatic that he collapsed rigid and spluttering onto a bale. Either his wallet was in dire need of Anusol or perhaps he was clenching it safe between his cheeks.

We stayed where we were for the rest of the event, watching dugs catch biscuits. Joss’s diet had got to him so badly that he was down there on all fours hoping a biscuit might come his way. We told him he was barking.

The next garden fête on the list ~ not that we have got a list, you understand ~ Ha! Ha! just talking metaphorically, is Milton Ernest. Did you know that the famous American big band leader Glenn Miller was billeted at Milton Ernest for a while during the war? He took his last fateful flight from nearby Twinwood Airfield. Both he and his list of garden fêtes were never seen again.