Alright - enough petrolheadedness. That's probably the longest conversation about cars I've ever had.
Last Monday, the Yank and I went to the Preview Evening of the
Hampton Court Flower Show. Say what you like about the monarchy - and I'm very ambivalent myself - but if it weren't for the avaricious unreasonableness of Henry VIII, we wouldn't have
this to play with today.
The Preview Evening - in fact the whole week-long event - is an incredibly civilised and polite occasion, attendance at which undermines any subsequent claims one might make to still being working-class at heart. The Yank and I found a spot for our picnic blanket, dumped our wine and stuff on it in full view of the passing throng, and wandered off, confident that the bourgeois honesty rife at the show would ensure that it'd all still be there when we got back two hours later. Which it was.
The weather was putting on one of those balmy, golden evenings that contrives to make you feel that everything's really jolly pleasant in a way that only the English can manage, and that, gosh, isn't the BBC a good idea, and strawberries too, and also Pimm's and big fat sausages. This is a feeling that can carry you right through to the ill-organised and bad-tempered Destruction Derby which results from trying to get eight thousand cars out of a nine foot gate onto a main road, which, frankly, is a typical British screw-up, just like the smug bloody BBC, tasteless supermarket strawberries, poncey bloody Pimm's and God knows what goes into sausages, but whatever it is, it'll take you down before you hit fifty-five.
We bought a lot of dahlias. Buying dahlias is pretty much tantamount to wearing a t-shirt that reads, "At my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near. And I'm not getting my leg over that often either." It's like designing your own wreath.
So, blokes - we've done pictures of our cars. Now let's do pictures of our flowers.
This week round at Bastable Towers, we're keen on this one...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3097/...2cb25f87b8.jpg