Fatbloke and Poppy

Fatbloke and Poppy - Part 13

9/3/2016

by Mike Peake

17th May 2014. The last weekend before the Prom found Poppy back in pride of place on the drive at home next to a huge pile of cleaning products (Halfords had a 3 for 2 offer!)

As the weekend progressed The pile of cleaning products diminished as Poppy 1st returned to being red and then became steadily shinier and sparklier and she was almost ready for the Prom the following Friday.

A quick wipe over on the afternoon of the Prom and now, she was ready to transport my youngest to her big night. Poppy got her there in style and performed faultlessly. Again both Poppy and my daughter received lots of positive comments and a great night was had by all. I even managed to keep my cricket bat unused!

Well Poppy was now well and truly back on the road and I was looking forward to enjoying a glorious British summer of top down classic motoring (ahem), but, as always, there were jobs still to do...

There was now next to no padding at all in the front seats.
The nearside headlamp had now blown so maybe an excuse to fit a halogen conversion?
The heater hasn’t worked for ages so I should take that off and try and get that sorted.
And of course, the gearbox was still suffering from incontinence...

Did I set to and get these jobs done as soon as possible? …Of course not! I was having much too much fun driving her around the green lanes of England!

One Saturday in July the green lanes took me on a trip up to TSSC's Triumfest at Donnington Park, on a whim (to avoid a list of jobs prepared for me by Mrs FB!) and to see if I fancied joining up again.

As you can see from photo's earlier on in the blog, I went to TSSC's international weekend in Stafford several times and enjoyed it enormously. There was plenty to do even for day trippers. There were full exhibition halls and plenty of cars in the "car park" in addition to the full evening entertainments. Therefore I was expecting similar this time.

Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed with the show. It was £17 to get in with a day ticket, and then very little there when I got in. There were hardly any cars in the car park. They were all still in the campsite, next to no traders and no exhibition halls. It must have been disappointing for the organisers.

I’m sure I was just expecting too much and It was probably just me and being a “day tripper”. I'm sure it would have been much better if I'd gone up for the weekend with my local section. (Unfortunately, there isn't a local section local to me!) I would have certainly fancied watching the Italian Job at the "Drive in" on Saturday night and the evening socialising reports did sound good.

On the plus side I did get to see the ADU 1B Le Man Spitfire in action and I spent a few very pleasant minutes chatting to a couple of clowns... No really...they were professional clowns with a really beautiful red Herald Coupe and a green convertible with a (Shorrocks?) supercharger fitted. Thanks Chaps! If you’re here, I'm sorry about my "Do the doors fall off?" joke but it was out of my mouth before I had the time to think that you may have heard it before...once or twice...

One more plus was the 230 mile round trip in Poppy with the roof down on a glorious day! I took theA361/A429 which was fantastic fun and then picked up M40/M42/A42. Not so much fun but a good endurance trial! The drive there and back was a blast and Poppy performed faultlessly.