​There was no one there. No toilet blocks, no catering vans, no other classic cars, no one. Well I am a bit early I thought so I waited. At ten past 5, 2 mini buses arrived and about 30 Indian people got out and immediately congregated around Poppy exclaiming excitedly in Punjabi. It was a while before anyone approached me to ask if I was there for the filming and to tell me that everyone loved the car and she was exactly what they were after. Then they all left to congregate at the back of 2 Luton vans that had just arrived.
 
Gradually, at about 5.15am, other classics rolled into the Square. I was joined by a split screen VW camper, a Rolls Royce, Dale Scutter in his Hillman Minx, Craig in Josh’s very tatty Allegro 3 and 2 London taxis; one was a Metro Cab and the other was a 2001 TX1.

​Then, nothing happened at all until 7am when all the classics except Poppy and the camper were told to drive in convoy around Piccadilly Circus several times, which they did. The Rolls led, with one of the production coordinators riding shotgun to direct operations. Apparently on the 3rd lap he received a phone call, had a nervous breakdown and turned into a gibbering jelly, causing the Roller driver to lead the convoy into a one way bus lane and nearly crashing into an oncoming bus. Having narrowly avoided disaster, the Rolls led the convoy back to the Square and the production assistant was never seen again. Maybe this should have clued us in on how the rest of the day would go.
 
9am and still no sign of a catering bus or any toilets, so we drivers took matters into ourr own hands and went to a Café Nero up the road. A disorderly queue was formed  for the single toilet and very much needed strong coffee was ordered.
 
Still no catering van, but breakfast of sorts arrived at about 10.30am.

​At 2.30 pm we were all told to head off in convoy and drive around Trafalgar Square several times. It was pointed out that you can no longer drive all the way around Trafalgar Square and the necessary detour would take several minutes.

​This didn’t seem to worry the production crew overly and we were told to get on with it so we did. We managed to stay in convoy for the 1st lap but by the time we’d been up around Aldwych and back we had moderns between us and even more by the 3rd and 4th lap so we gave up and went back to St James Square. Of course, as is the way with London, all our parking spaces in the square had been taken and we were forced to double park and keep an eagle eye for wardens.

​None of us had seen any cameras filming us on our drive and I began to suspect that it had all been a ploy to silence the more vocal among the frustrated drivers.

​It was however, great fun driving a classic through central London. The tourists are less reserved than the normal British public and shouted, waved and took plenty of photos. One lady told me Poppy was her “Dream car” whilst she took photos at a pedestrian crossing. Even “proper Londoners” seemed impressed with several cabbies winding down their windows and calling out “Lovely motaa Guvna” and giving me a big thumbs up. I even had a chauffeur in a luxury Mercedes pull up alongside me and telling me his sister had one back in the day, before saying that they look much smaller now especially with me driving. It took me a while to figure out, but I think he was calling me fat!
 
Anyway, the day continued pretty much as before with zero communication from the production team. Lunch turned up at about 3.30pm and looked just as appetising as breakfast.

​It got better though. The couple in the back were told to be “as passionate as you can be whilst keeping your clothes on” and the young lady next to me was told to be the same with my left hand side while I kept my eyes resolutely on the road. The poor young lady did extremely well in quickly masking the look of horror that passed across her face but I was less successful at hiding my soppy grin. Anyway for some reason, it took 47 takes before we got it right and the Director was getting quite cross with me. I really can’t think why I went wrong so often. The actors loved the attention Poppy and therefore they were getting from the public on the drives to the location.
 
And that was it. I was handed a wodge of folding money which was nice, as after my acting debut, I would quite happily have done it for free. I was slightly disappointed that I wasn’t going to be in one of those famous big Bollywood dance numbers, but I suppose that would be asking too much of Lady Luck!
 
Goodbyes were said and I set off home in the London rush hour. Even that was quite pleasant though as traffic was a lot lighter than usual because of COVID I guess, and loads of Londoners wanted to chat about Poppy while we were stuck in the queues. I’ve not driven a classic in London before and it was much nicer than I was expecting.
 
2 hours of faultless and quite rapid driving (for a 50 year old car) later I pulled up at home and I made a full  confession to Mrs FB. She was cross. Very cross, but not because I was canoodling with a young lady .No,  Apparently, my behaviour was less than COVID-aware and I should be more careful.
 
Anyway, for whatever reason, I am now quarantined in the caravan on the drive. I’m hoping that it is only for the 2 weeks suggested by the Government but I’ll let you know. Oh, and last night, I was told they wanted Poppy back. Not sure when though. I agreed instantly.
 
The when was Sunday, at the much more sensible time of 3pm and it was at Heathrow instead of central London. Poppy continued to be a proper show off and it seemed as if all the crew and actors wanted their photo taken with her. I think it was Poppy’s version of giving autographs.

​The reason Poppy was needed again was that the scene taken in central London last time, was far too “steamy” for Punjabi cinema and needed reshooting.
 
Natalie (Yes, I know her name now) and I were told to carry on as pretty much as before, but the 2 in the back were told to tone it down a touch. As it was the scene taken out of the camper, looking down into Poppy’s open cockpit, we only had to pull up alongside the camper and act. If you can call maintain a silly grin whilst being canoodled by a young lady acting, then I acted my socks off. We had it all in the can (I know! get me with the lingo!) in just 32 takes this time despite my best efforts.
 
A perfectly behaved Poppy then took me back home… to my quarantine caravan.
 
Stay safe everyone. I’ll be back when I’ve got something to write about.
 
Some creative licence may have been employed in the telling of this tale.

By Mike Peake

​Hello chaps. Well that’s another 6 months gone by without a blog. That makes only two blogs in the last 12 months. I’m going to assume that you’ve missed me as it’s far better for my ego that way, and apologise for my laziness, but with no shows or tours this year, it has been a real struggle to find enough material to fill a whole blog. However, I’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel, (what do you mean “What’s new”?) and hope I’ve got enough to keep you amused for a few minutes.
 
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.
 
One of the 1st things I did to Poppy when I bought her was to have the 1968 Motorola radio that she’d been fitted with reconditioned, converted to FM and fitted with an auxiliary lead so I could play a Walkman through the radio. The radio was fine, however the auxiliary lead had never worked well. It was just a 1.5 meter lead coming out the back of the radio with a jack plug on which got in the way as it just trailed on the floor. I sort of fixed it by drilling a small hole in the back of the glove box and feeding the lead into the box, but in fixing one problem, I created another. It was very difficult now to change the music whilst driving but was good enough. All this was 20 years ago. Technology has moved on. Now, I have an iPhone. I have maps on my iPhone. I have a handy speedometer app on my iPhone and I have most of my music collection on my iPhone. Best of all, it all works at the same time. The problem was, I couldn’t plug it into the radio for my tunes or it would be in the glove box and I couldn’t see my satnav, or I could see my satnav but had no tunes.
 
I decided it needed fixing. I managed to find some 3.5mm sockets online and purchased the minimum order quantity of 5. Which at the time was rather annoying.
 
So, I cut off the jack plug on the auxiliary lead and pulled it out of the glove box. Then, rather cunningly, I plugged the plug into my new sockets and using the continuity tester on my multimeter, I was able to establish what colour wire went to which pin on the back of the socket.  Then, using my grandfather’s (No, not the bus driver) soldering iron which is older than me, I made my 1st attempt. It didn’t go well. Let’s just say that I was glad that the MOQ of 3.5mm jack sockets is more than one.
 
As you can see, the 2nd …ish attempt was far more successful.

​Now, before anyone takes the Mickey, I would like to remind you all that you won’t be able to see the joints unless you find yourself upside down in the passenger seat with your head in the floor well. If you do happen to find yourself in this position then I assure you that you will have other things on your mind than thinking “Oh, look at those ugly joints.”
 
Further, when I plugged it all in and turned it on, it all worked beautifully. That, in my book, is all the elements of a perfectly executed soldered joint.
 
Next up, was mounting the socket in the car. Along with my 1968 Motorola radio, Poppy came with it fitted in the original dealer fit console and speaker box. Apparently, these are rarer than rocking horse doodoos now so I thought long and hard about drilling a hole in it. Then I drilled a hole in it.
 
My thinking was that A. it was the best place for it. B. the socket was small and metallic so will be hardly noticeable. And C. it’s my car, my console so yaa boo sucks to anyone who says different.

​I think it all looks rather neat and it works a treat. Unfortunately, I can’t show a picture of my phone all mounted up and connected because my camera is on my phone, which was all mounted up and connected. I’m ashamed to say that it took me several minutes of searching for my phone to take a picture before I realised this.
 
I’m really pleased with the job, as I can now be told where to go whilst listening to Deep Purple. Just like being at home with Mrs FB really.
 
Next up on my list jobs to do was give Poppy a service and while I was at it, I’d change the oil pressure sensor which stopped working after my old jump-leads melted when attached to the starter in close proximity. I’d also replace the coolant drain tap on the engine block which had seized up. The service and the oil pressure sensor change all went really well. The drain tap on the other hand…
 
1st up, a socket wouldn’t fit on because of the tap bit being in the way so I spent a considerable time looking for the rather odd sized 13/16” spanner which I eventually found in the bottom of a very large box of odd sized imperial spanners that Muggle friends, neighbours and family keep giving me when they clear out their garages.
 
My problems didn’t end there. The only way to get the spanner on the tap was to squeeze my prop forward arms between the down pipe and the block, spend 3 minutes trying to fit the spanner onto the tap only to be able to turn ¼ of a turn before having to repeat the process endlessly. Then do it all again to fit the new tap… which leaked. So I tightened it up some more. It still wept from the tread so I tightened it up some more. This continued until all of a sudden, it started turning really easily. I said bad words. Very bad words. So I went through it all again to put the old one back on.

​I then spent a while staring at the stripped thread whilst fuming at the “cheap tat” that they get away with selling now. I stopped when I realised I sounded just like my Dad. So I took a picture of the stripped thread and posted it on Facebook asking everyone to fume at the “cheap tat” they get away with selling now. I’m going to replace it with a simple plug if anyone can point me in the right direction.
 
Now, as you may remember, I spent last summer re-spraying the rest of Poppy red and was telling everyone who asked why I hadn’t done the white stripe that I was waiting to make sure that the red was fully cured before sticking masking tape on it. I can now reveal that the real reason was that I’d lost the will to live and was thoroughly fed up with painting. A full 12 months later, I still felt the same. Fortunately, I have a very good friend in Saint Tosh “Ow Mooch” Brooks who took pity on me and volunteered to do my stripe for me. All I had to do was drive it up to his toy box on a farm near Doncaster. Which I did when COVID restrictions had lifted enough to allow this sort of thing.
 
As I was pulling up by the farm gate near a church, a lovely young lady came running over asking if she could borrow my “lovely little car” as they were doing a wedding photo shoot for a magazine. Well Poppy was immediately up for this and very flattered to be asked. I was unceremoniously kicked out while Poppy positioned herself in the most photogenic setting she could find.

​Photos by Hannah Sheerman Photography and I’m sure you’ll all agree, she did a fine job.
 
After this slight delay, it was down to Tosh’s Toy box where he worked his magic in fine style.
 
In the time it would have taken me to find a paint brush, Tosh had Poppy flatted back, masked up and sprayed. It was amazing to watch a master at work. Seriously, he had the job done in 2 hours flat. It would have taken me a week. I was really rather pleased. So a huge thanks is offered to Tosh. 

​What’s really great is that Poppy’s stripe is the same shade of white as Apollo, Tosh and Gus’s Rover P5B camper and a favourite amongst the group. It’s good to know that a bit of Apollo will stay with the group after that heartless old b…er…Yorkshire man sold her out from underneath us.

​A few more months went by with me, Poppy and the family off round the green lanes whenever possible to blow the cobwebs away and although we’ve lived in this town all our adult lives, I’m still discovering new roads

​Thanks for reading chaps and if it’s not too much for you, I shall be back shortly with tales of fame and Bollywood.
 
See you soon.