January 14 2017

Let's start simple and grow slowly.

These last few weeks have been the beginning of making plans for the middle of this year. That's simple isn't it?

Of course it gets more complicated when I explain what those plans are so we'll wait for next week for that.

January 21 2017

I WOULDN'T HAVE LOOKED GOOD IN A MINI

In order to write about what I am, at present, doing I need, perhaps, to explain previous ambitions. It was on 1 April 1969 that I achieved one of my first ambitions and, unknowingly, experienced something that would change my life and still loiters to affect what I do.

That ambition was to buy my own car, which in turn, I thought, would lead to an illustrious career in motor sport. At that time the manufacturer doing the most in motor sport was undoubtedly Ford. I wanted the newly introduced Ford Escort GT. My ever-supportive father found one of the new FordSport dealers near his office in Sloane Square and, one Saturday, we went along and I bought one. I had to borrow half the price but father, as always, helped by standing as a guarantor. We were to pick it up a couple of weeks later.

So, on Tuesday April 1, I left my office in Cheapside, caught a tube and made my way to Sloane Square and met up with father. I now realise we achieved this meeting without being able to phone each other while in transit, as is the way of the modern world.

My dealings on my first visit had been with Jill Robinson, who was herself a very good club rally driver. However, on this visit, I was to collect the keys for the car from a man called David Sutton who would later go on to run rally cars for many of the greats of rallying. In 1968 he had already run a Ford Escort in the RAC Rally for the Finn, Timo Makinen, who had previously done amazing things with a Mini, winning the Monte Carlo rally of 1965 in one. He was a bit of a hero of mine.

Anyhow, father and I went in, Jill Robinson came down from the mezzanine office, if I remember it correctly, and said David would be in shortly. A few minutes later he came in accompanied by what to me was a giant. Jill introduced me to David and said she would have the car brought round to the front. Father had to go outside for a quick smoke of his pipe. David then introduced me to the man he was with who I thought I recognised. “This is Timo Makinen”, he said. I have absolutely no recollection of what conversation took place after this. I was in awe. It was about rallying that I know but words….no idea.

Funnily enough, a few years later, when father received his OBE from Her Majesty the Queen we asked him afterwards what she had said to him and he said he had no idea nor did he remember his replies. I think genetically the Rowland brain may go blank when in awesome company.

David Sutton then walked me out of the showrooms, I do remember Timo said good luck, and in to the rush hour traffic in Sloane Square and showed me the controls of MY car, explained a few points and said to bring it back for a 500 mile service (seriously) as soon as I reached that target. Somehow I drove home and then proudly parked my prize possession on our driveway.

A few weeks later I learned that the Daily Telegraph had sponsored a Round Britain powerboat race and Timo Makinen would be taking part. The race would be ten separate stages with overnight stops. My interest in powerboats escalated with immediate effect. The race, I think, took place in July of 1969 and, guess what, Timo Makinen, with his two crew mates, won in his boat Avenger Two.

But although I loved the idea of the adventure, greatly admired all those who took part, it was more the idea that you would see all the British coastline that appealed to me. I have always loved landscapes and views and anything for an adventure, Of course the competitors didn’t see all the coast, partly because there was a considerable amount of fog on a couple of the legs and in any case they were pretty busy controlling the boats. The race was a one-off for 15 years but the idea of a coastal journey stayed with me.

Then in early 1984, with a large amount of capital now in our house, my ex-wife and I decided to take our own children on an adventure. We would sell the house and use the money to show our two children their own country. We would take them out of school for a year and see what we could see. But what would we look at and how would we go?

Celestinely, or just coincidently, in 1984 Everest agreed to sponsor a second Round Britain powerboat race. It was news, it triggered the old brain cells and I decided that the adventure would be a year-long journey, on land, around the English coastline. I had earlier been thinking about criss-crossing the country and visiting historic and heritage sites all over our country but the coastal journey won out.

If you have read other parts of this site you may know that I made a second journey ten years later as part of a successful educational project, different wife but one of the same children and a new one. I then made a third journey seven years after that, no wife but the new child from the second journey, at the request of an American Travel Magazine trying to show Americans that England was not all burning cattle and that there were still some beautiful parts. Unlike the other two this last one was a whistle-stop 30 day journey and did not include Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

I think, therefore, it is fair to say that the decision to buy my car from Clarke and Simpson of Sloane Square had a far deeper effect on my life than I could have imagined. Next week I will reveal how that one meeting in April 1969 may still have one more outcome ....... or not.

January 28 2017

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

I may now be the wrong side of 65, or the right side depending on your view of old people, but I have never envisaged “being retired”. I was speaking to someone yesterday who said his father, aged 76, had not worked since he was 60. He just pottered around, pruned the plants, walked into his local village for a coffee each morning and sat and watched TV. Not me, I am afraid or perhaps you should be afraid.

I have to be doing, planning or creating something. I will readily, and happily, admit that things don’t always go as I planned. I will readily, and happily, admit I have made some wrong decisions. How else can we learn? But I will also readily, and happily, tell you that I have enjoyed every single day of my adult life. As John Denver sang “some days are diamonds, some days are stones,” but whether I have been basking in something successful (occasionally) or fighting to survive and put things right (far more often), I have loved every minute of it.

I have spent the last eight months writing the history of England for my learning website following a request from some schools to do this. That finishes at the end of June. What should I do? My daughter, I fear, may attempt to cut off my legs below the knees so as to cure my itchy feet. She will fail.

I have two options at the moment and I need to make a decision very soon. The first option is really quite simple. I could stay still, find some hobby to amuse me, never need to watch another deadline whoosh past, and just let things happen. The laissez faire approach: see I did listen to those economics lessons. The second option is to set off on another little journey, enhance the learning website and have yet another adventure.

Obviously this needs some careful, reasoned thought and I, carefully and reasonably, thought you could join me on that road. I have already said that retirement isn’t really an option but perhaps I should examine that and then look at my little journey.

Please do join me and see how the grey matter is best put to use.