Hope Show 2014

Post by: **jimj** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:32 pm

Hope Show 2014. I`m not one to take a car to a show and sit beside it in my B&Q chair desperately hoping that someone will stop and speak. As I`ve said before, usually such a person just wants to talk about their car really. Don`t these people realise that talking about cars is great but listening actually isn`t. Just ask my missus.

But?there is the Hope Agricultural Show on Bank Holiday Monday very local to us and it`s ?5 to enter a car in the classic car section which includes entry for 2 people. Otherwise you have to park down the road and pay ?9 each to get in. As a Yorkshireman that`s too good to miss. We just like to go, park up, and meet up with like-minded cheapskates, have a picnic, and talk about cars but without actually listening, of course. It`s a proper archetypal country show with gun dog and sheepdog demonstrations, motorbike stunt team, cattle and sheep showing, all that stuff and, best of all, yummy mummies watching their princesses in the gymkana. There`s vintage tractors and, of course, the stationary engines with their eccentric owners, fascinating. There`s also a minority strutting about in country casuals, brand new Barbours and Hunters. They might as well wave a banner shouting ?townies?, so that`s interesting too.

The forecast for today was miserable, it was touch and go, shall we go or not. We`d entered our Lotus Elan Sprint which is not far off 100 point perfect and freshly polished so if we did go we`d have to put up with all that envy which is uncomfortable. That`s why I rarely wear shorts. Knees, darling?... Fabulous,?. I could kiss `em. Actually I quite often do. But if we did go we might win a prize, surely?

As you may know, we`re lucky to be included as a member of that sect, more of a cult really, the HVR, but I`m mindful that others have tasted success where we have only been able to bask in their reflected glory. Rodger and Alan have both won Best in Show at Hope, maybe Phillip too, and he`s certainly won at Bakewell. Terry had come 3rd at some place on the west coast and Richard and Nicola have won the Trans Am outright. John has come 2nd on the Rallye des Alpes, etc. You get the picture, but sadly, success has eluded us. I can`t blame the car so, maybe, like Felipe Massa, I must have peaked early, possibly in a previous lifetime.

But, hang on, with our delicious Lagoon Blue Sprint we must be in for a prize. The weather was bad, attendance was down, some entrants were leaving early, the odds were improving, we were freezing but hanging in there, not least, to bring more shared glory to the HVR.

I`d checked out the opposition and there were some really nice cars but many had won in previous years so were ineligible, we were feeling cold and wet but the rain had washed the mud off and the rain drop covered car was looking positively luminescent, like a big shiney block of Loo Bloo. In the unlikely event we didn`t win ?Best in Show? there was always ?Best in Class?. Bring it on, but hurry up, we`d left the dog at home.

Traversty, that`s what it was. We should have gone with Gareth and Pete to Oulton. I`m not going to Hope again, well?..not until next year.

Jim