Plod Prang

Just wasted a good deal of the morning watching the unfolding drama of a Road Traffic Incident on our doorstep (almost literally) …

Sitting in the front room reading the paper and finishing my breakfast cup of coffee, when I heard the approaching sound of an emergency vehicle siren. This is not an unusual thing for us, so I wasn’t really paying much notice — until the siren stopped rather abruptly, followed by a loud bang.

Hurried outside (naturally!) to find a police car and another car looking a bit too closely arranged at the top of Roy’s drive, next door.

Fortunately, it was soon apparent nobody was badly hurt, but someone was clearly stuck in the civilian vehicle: the police driver involved, a passing motorist and two cyclists leaning into the car and talking to someone.

In due course, more police and an ambulance arrived. After a considerable time an old lady managed to struggle out of the car and was pushed in a wheelchair to the ambulance (probably badly shaken, but not much harmed).

Eventually, a couple of Egerton recovery trucks appeared and removed the two cars (click to see a few snaps)

Apr 30, 2011 – Police Car Prang

My guess would be that the plod was proceeding fairly rapidly eastward and the old dear turned west out of Princess Drive. Probably she looked right, saw empty road, looked left and decided she could go, but failed to look right again before doing so.

Easter at Oulton

Having missed it last year (due to the event inconveniently coinciding with Ruby Wedding!), I was looking forward to the F3/GT meeting at OP.

Quite pleased to be assigned to Deer Leap post, where you not only get a good view of the start/finish, but also are guaranteed some interest by taking a small part in the grid and start procedure. As it turned out, that was the nearest we go to any action; I think it’s one of those posts where more-often-than-not nothing happens, but when it does it can be big. (Only other time I’ve been there, we had the incident where a car flipped over on pit-lane entry and the driver did 100yds on his head — lucky those helmets are so good!)

Weather was good: mostly sunny and bright, if a little cool.

Racing was, as always, good in parts. The F3’s were rather a disappointment, turning out to be fast but not all that close, once the opening few laps were done. GT’s on the other hand, were very entertaining, and quite eventful at times (on other parts of the circuit). Especially impressed with the new Mercedes …

   

Donington BTCC

Excellent weekend at Donington for the second meeting of the 2011 Touring Cars.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny in Crewe, but a good deal of the journey there was in moderate fog. Donington was clear by the time I got there, and the day soon developed into a warm one.

Assigned to Post One, which is just beyond the start/finish line. Didn’t anticipate much action there for Day One, being mostly practice/qualifying sessions; and so it proved. Not a bad day, though, finishing with three races.

Sunday promised to be even better, weatherwise, and did not disappoint — obliged to remove thermal vest during the lunch interval!

We had some good racing and a reasonable amount of marshalling activity during the course of the day.

Major talking point was of course Plato’s dramatic happening in  BTCC Race 2, and the remarkable way they actually got the car back into usable condition for Race 3.

Write-up here: BTCC Donington

Videos here: Race 1, Race 2, Race 3

Tempus Fugit

Despite repeated reminders on my phone from Astrid Tasks, I seem to have failed dismally to keep up my resolution to add something to the blog once-a-week!
(Incidentally, the combined use of Astrid sync’ed to producteev has now replaced Thunderbird Lightning Tasks as my to-do manager — seems to work very well, and means I can always see my tasks when out-and-about or away from home.)
Since last blog, then, here’s a couple of things I could have noted …

Church Men’s Group Bowling
Howard has commendably decided to try and get some activities lined up for our informal Men’s Fellowship this summer, beginning with a 10-pin bowling outing, the week before last. It was, sadly, not as well supported as we might have liked.
Never-the-less, six of us duly lined up in Lane 1 at the Lakeside bowling alley in Crewe, and proceeded to demonstrate varying levels of skill. My own demonstration was particularly “varying” — started off with two spares and a strike, only to go rapidly downhill thereafter.
We completed one game (or frame or set or whatever you call it) in about an hour, won by Howard, with Simon a close second. The second was curtailed when the equipment failed repeatedly, despite the efforts of the staff.
Finished off the outing at the Wetherspoons pub, availing ourselves of the “Curry-and-a-pint for £4.99” offer.

BRSCC NW at Oulton Park
Second marshalling outing of the year was the BRSCC meeting on April 2nd.
Cracking day, weather-wise, after a slow start.
Posted at Cascades, for only the second time in my career. We had a couple in the gravel and a few near-misses — enough to keep us interested, but nothing too dramatic.
Matt turned up with The Boys in the afternoon, but I only had chance of a brief chat to them, unfortunately. (Jack’s first experience — seems he liked it!)

Wedding Anniversary
April 4th was our anniversary, of course. Really nothing much to report! — it was a routine child-minding day for us, so warmed-up beef from Sunday was the scheduled tea: livened it up a bit with a bottle of bubbly, some smoked salmon mouse starters and a chocolate pudding of some sort.

Annual Car Service on the Hottest Day of the Year
Last Saturday was a glorious day, with wall-to-wall sunshine and temperatures in the 20’s — I spent a good deal of it in the garage completing the annual service of the MX-5.