Federer Roddick and a Lotus Elan
As I left Suffolk yesterday at the same time as the Wimbledon Final started. It was a lovely day for a drive in the Lotus with the top down and I sped up the A1 to see my old boss in York. I’d actually worked for him at ICI and I’ve known him since before our first child was born, almost forty years ago.
The A1 has been improved over the last year or so and I made Doncaster in just over the two hours, when before all the roundabouts had gone, it used to take two hours and a quarter. You wouldn’t have thought, that just removing these five bottlenecks would have improved things so much. But then you would sometimes wait for perhaps up to ten minutes at either the Gamston or Worksop junctions. Now you just sped through.
I should say a bit about my transport.
I always describe my Lotus Elan as the second best car in the world. That is not an arrogant claim, as in many terms, now as the car approaches it’s late middle-age, it is maturing like an old bottle of wine.
My late wife bought the car new in 1991 to travel to courts all over East Anglia in her work as a barrister and somehow it never got sold as she replaced it first with an Audi A4 Avant Quattro, a Mercedes sports car, a Mini and finally a Porsche Boxster.
When she died, it was sell the the three year-old Boxstern or the sixteen year-old Lotus. It was no contest. As the guy who services my cars, said after driving the Lotus back from it’s MOT, if you gave him the choice, he’d take the Lotus too. He wondered if anything handled so well?
I suppose an Elise does and my wife did try one. But as she tended to wear a skirt most days for work, an Elise is a no-no, as a lady can’t get out of one in a skirt, without showing all and sundry to passers-by. It will be interesting to see what the new Evora is like. I can afford one, but whether I want to spend over £55,000 on a car is another matter.
But knowing Lotus, I might get seduced at some time.
In my rules on what is the best car, you can’t judge it as of now. So if you think that your car is best, what will it be like when it is twenty years old, has nearly 110,000 miles on the clock. Will it still perform in the same way as it did, when you first bought it?
The Lotus does. Last summer, I let her (Lotuses or should it be Loti are all female) loose on the German autobahn. You’d be stuck in a queue of traffic doing seventy or so and there’d be some German hard on your bumper, flashing you to get over. (It is actually not a good idea to do that to any Lotus, as when they stop, they stop a hell of a lot faster than most cars and totally under control.) When the traffic cleared, it was just a matter of flooring the throttle and the car behind was left standing. Usually I’d pull over into the slow lane after a mile or so, as I don’t want to trash the engine. (I suspect I won’t incidentally! Like most Lotus engines they are tuned just as much for reliability, than power!) My tormentor would pass after a minute or so, with a German version of “What’s the fuck’s that?” on his face.
But perhaps where the Lotus is so different to other cars, is that drive anywhere and heads turn. Admittedly mine is Norfolk Mustard in colour, but what other car that is a twenty year-old design does that? I once remember a Lamborghini P400 Miura doing that in the 1960s in Oxford Street. But then that was possibly the noisiest car ever made.
So there are two things in my life, that I will protect with everything; my Rolex and my Lotus.
I stopped at York for tea with my ex-boss and his wife, admired their lovely garden and then set off over the Pennines towards Blackpool. Incidentally I filled up with petrol at York and the Lotus had averaged just over 31 miles per gallon. Not bad for a sports car, that hadn’t been driven for economy on the way up. I’d done the 171 miles from my home in two hours forty minutes, which is perhaps about twenty minutes faster than the last time I drove to York for the races. But then we’re back to the A1 roundabouts.
As I started off for Blackpool, Federer and Roddick, were still at it and it was 3-all in the fifth set. They were still at it, as I skirted Leeds. As I left the centre of Bradford on my way towards Keithley and Colne, the good weather was holding and the Lotus was still top down, but Roddick had finally succumbed.
What a match!
I was pleased though that Federer won, as he is such a gent and he deserves to beat the record of Grand Slams.
Will Murray ever get one? Probably! But nothing in this life is certain. Don’t I as a widower just know it?
If there is one problem with the Lotus, it is rain.
There I was driving through Colne in the sunlight and all of a sudden, just as I was about to join the M58, it started to rain. And it wasn’t drizzle.
Luckily, I was able to put the car into a side street within about twenty seconds, so I didn’t get that wet. And remember too, that to put up the hood on a Lotus is possibly the fastest of any car. You do need to get out, pull one handle, lift the roof from under the hard cover, throw it forward, jump in and click the latches. Usually, I can do it in a third of the time, it takes one of those fully electric jobs.
I didn’t get as wet as I might have!
Finally at the allotted hour of eight, I pulled up outside the hotel in Blackpool.
It had been a drive that I won’t forget. And all because of two modern and civilised gladiators.
Advantage Murray?
Andy Murray didn’t seem too pleased about being made to play under the roof and lights at Wimbledon last night. After all it could be argued that he hadn’t had enough time to prepare and that things like his rackets were all strung to the wrong tension.
Perhaps!
But now he is the only person, who’s won a full five set match under the roof and lights. So perhaps he knows more about it than anyone else?
In that case he has an advantage!
Phew! Murray just gets through!
It was tight last night and Andy Murray just made it in five sets. But it was very much a spectacle under the new roof at Wimbledon. It would appear that the concept works. It would have been rather poor if it hadn’t!
But the same can’t be said for the under-21 footballers. They managed to lose four-nil to the Germans. Surprising, considering that the second team drew 1-1 a week ago.
Wimbledon’s Roof
The new roof at Wimbledon appears to be a success. I say appears, as so far it hasn’t needed to be used and it looks like from the BBC’s weather forecast that it won’t be needed for the start of next week.
There is a good description of the roof on this web page.
Looking at the design as an engineer, it would appear to be simple, unobstructed and does what it is supposed to. I also think that the policy of the All-England Club of not disclosing the cost may work in the designer’s favour, when they repeat the design elsewhere as they surely will.
So so far so good!
Shrieking and Shouting
I’m typing this as I’m watching a match at Wimbledon between two women players; Azarenka and Cirstea.
Why does Azarenka have to shreik all of the time? It really does turn one off women’s tennis. If I had nothing better to do, I’d use the Red Button on my Sky Box to find a man’s game!
It would appear that the punters at Wimbledon feel the same way I do about her. The Centre Court is half empty. Apparently, they booed her in Paris. The French have always had good taste.
Queen’s Message to Murray
Trust good old Liz to do the right thing.
And she used a proper letter too! But we all know that she does text too!
Wimbledon Uniform
As a keen tennis player of the real variety, I’ve been watching Wimbledon.
But the uniform the line-judges wear is awful and totally out of keeping.
And why too was it designed by Ralph Lauren, who is not a British designer. Surely someone like Paul Smith, who was I believe a competent sportsman himself, would have done better.
Memories of Chuck McKinley
Just watching the end of the Murray-Kendrick match at Wimbledon.
Thankfully, Murray won, but Kendrick was taking a leaf out of a fellow American, the late, Chuck McKinley. I must have been 15 when McKinley won the Championships in 1963. He had this great advantage that he would dive everywhere and retrieve almost impossible balls. If like me, you’ve played tennis on grass, you’ll know what is possible 9on that service, but not on anything hard.
I was sad to see that Chuck McKinley died at just 45.
The Anonymous Widower 