The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

I took my 1947 Bentley Mk VI to the local car show on the heath and parked next to my friend and fellow Bentley Drivers Club member Simon Leach, it was a hot day.

I was asked if I would do a quick interview about the car on camera and as if drawn like a spider to a fly I found myself in front of the camera. Having had a modicum of experience in front of a camera I did ask before we started if they wanted to do a sound check but they said no, so if you actually want to hear my answers you my have to listen slightly intently. Now, I don’t want to make a big thing of this but I got no wardrobe check, or makeup check and as for the lack of a Winnebago trailor to rest in before going on set, what can I say. Except the two young ladies who did the interview were very pleasant and it’s not their fault they had a limited budget for the shoot!

And after all that build up the thing won’t upload here, but I have seen it and I have to say I was brilliant, a legend in my own lunchtime, if I say so myself.

Not much to say…………….just two young people very much in love!!!!!

And some car stuff!!

To all those who may have seem my earlier post concerning the difficulty downsizing a photo of my car to upload to the Bentley Drivers Club members area, as you can see from the photo, I succeeded but it only took most of yesterday and some of this morning to complete the task!

I’m sure my computer used to have an option to crop a photograph you had downloaded but it seems to have dissappeared, so……if I remember correctly, I downloaded the original photo on here and cropped it, then posted it and saved the link in the photo, (I think!) and during all this I accidentally deleted the post about Adolph Eichmann which I had to retrieve and upload again.

Then I copied the photo so I could save the link which I used when asked to ‘choose file’ on the BDC members page and low and behold it finally came up in a size smaller than 2.5 whotsits.

It’s things like this that make the lack of a handy 13 year old ‘clever dick’ and a slightly more modern computer unnecessarily complicated for those of us who were educated with nothing more sophisticated than a fountain pen.

Some many many years ago I did a documentary about Adolf Eichmann, it is so many years ago that I can’t properly remember the story line but it was something along the lines of Eichmann allowing Jews to escape with the assistance of an industrialist, not as I recollect Schindler.

However, I believe he was doing so in an attempt to negotiate with the allies should he fail to escape after the war.

Knowing I was playing Eichmann, I took my 1935 Austin Seven Ruby to the shoot as I thought it would make a good photo opportunity and having recently had a massive clear out at home, I happened to come across the photo which I thought looked rather good, barring the poor quality of an old point and squirt camera. It was a very tiring day, not due to the long filming hours but due to the fact that wardrobe had supplied two rather lovely leather boots, one of which was a size too small.

When we broke for lunch it was suggested I might like to remove the offending boot but I declined as I thought, if I took the boot off I would be very reluctant to put the damn thing back on again.

Ah, the glamour of showbusiness!

I have just spent the best part of two hours at least trying to resize a photo of my Bentley Arnage R as I wanted to upload it to the Bentley Drivers Club members site but it keeps saying the photo is too large and in an effort to make it less than 2.5 thingamebobs I have continued to crop the photo until I came to the conclusion that I would have to remove the car from the photo altogether if I wanted to make it fit.

I have to say I have uploaded photos to the BDC site before and never had this problem and have given up and decided to use the original photo I took of the car which I thought looked quite nicely framed and just post it here, at least this way the last two or so hours of my life will not go down as completely wasted!

Angella was away for this event with our daughter which meant I was alone when I arrived early with my 1947 Bentley Mk VI which gave me ample time to have a mooch around before any of my friends arrived so this post will take on the aspect of a mini travelogue of the home of the code breakers.

The car safely in place I started my tour, had I known how popular the car was going to be for photo opportunities I should have hung around all day and charged a small fee for each person.

One of many rooms once filled with rather brainy codebreakers.

The famous Enigma machine, a very clever German machine to jumble words into code.

But not as clever as the Bomb, the British machine which decoded the German messages.

I have to say, the offices where fairly basic but I daresay most of the people there where too embroiled in their work to worry about that.

Alan Turings teddy bear, every man should have one! I still have two from my childhood.

An interesting exhibition by Jacqui Harris of wartime wedding dresses.

Some of which were made from parachute silk in true make do and mend fashion. Delightful.

Stunning dresses.

Now this had me stumped at first but it was fairly early in the morning.

However, after a quick cup of tea and a half an ounce of Old Shag in my briar I’d soon cracked it, for it was nothing less than the text from a German military manual, quite simple really. Far easier than the conundrum of President Kennedy’s cold war speech in Berlin, Ich bin ein Berliner, was he describing himself as a doughnut, a German sausage or a Berliner in spirit?

And finally, the answer to the whereabouts of my dear wife who went missing for the day to assist our daughter who had purchased yet another Poodle puppy! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Zelda, who is quite lovely.

My, I have been busy, it was the end of May when we went to the Great Central Railway weekend and I have to say we were a little disappointed as it was not as good as last year which had all the promise of going back to the old days where all the stations were taken over by different armies but it was not to be.

I was told they have got rid of the woman who used to organise the event apparently as they didn’t wish to pay for her services, I am unsure if this is the full story but I think by penny pinking they have spoilt what could have been a superb event.

Not to be downhearted Angella managed to do a little shopping and we met our friends as usual, so it was not all bad by any means.

Having a quick wonder about we bumped into Alan for a quick jive and a photo.

Last night dinner and with the aid of a waitress we snapped another rather dark image, let’s hope for an improvement for next year. At least all our friends usually come up to standard!

Surely, this can’t be true, I thought when first confronted with this headline and a photograph of Brunel’s famous ship S S Great Britain. What in hells name is wrong with the name it was given in the first place I thought, for not only is it considered considerably bad luck to change the name of a ship but I can see no justifiable reason for doing so.

I was going to mention the unfortunate renaming of the American ship USS Phoenix, one of the few ships to survive the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in world war two which was later sold to the Argentinian navy and renamed ARA General Belgrano, later sunk by the British submarine HMS Conqueror in the Falklands war of 1982.

However, I’m delighted to report, it is not the name of the famous ship which is being changed but the name of the dockyard in an attempt to reflect the diverse comunity of the Bristol area according to Andrew Edwards the chief executive of the SS Great Britain Trust, although he did admit that the rebrand would be seen as woke. Fancy that!

The dockyard was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and has housed the SS Great Britain for over a decade and will be rebranded as the Bristol Dockyards and will now focus more closely on the role the SS Great Britain played in the British Empire, saying the dockyard was determined to become more cool!

Apparently, the museum will not fucus on the engineering of the ship but will focus on telling the story of the people of the very diverse city of Bristol and the impact the immigrants carried on the ship had on the indigenous people of Australia, featuring research conducted by community groups into the diverse people who have been a part of the ships history. People included will be George Moses, a Jamaican ships cook and Bardadian muscian and poet James W Jones together with the Johnson shipbuilding family who travelled from the Wye Valley to work on the massive ship.

I believe the last sentence of the article is a direct quote, one has to admit it sounds like one to me so I have included it here for examination. The renaming and museum reopening is part of a wider initiative to transform the historical site into a “cultural campus” tackling issues around heritage, sustainability and diversity, ahead of the 60th anniversary of the ship’s return to Bristol in 2030.

I have to say in this day and age I’m not altogether surprised at the way modern people attack the problem of running a historical shipyard containing a superb and important ship in the history of the British nation and have to wonder why the shipyard should need to change its name, nor why it should wish to be cool! Whilst I appreciate it is quite interesting to know that a Jamaican cook, an obscure Barbadian poet both travelled on the ship and a family from the Wye Valley took part in the construction of the ship I’m not entirely certain what might be added to a visit to the dockyard from research from a community group. Now, I know I am a tad old fahioned here but I have to wonder what percentage of people who visit the SS Great Britain will appreciate the cultural campus with all the added diversity entailed within, or will the majority still just stand in wonderment at the superb engineering involved in the construction of Brunel’s amazing ship.

Rather belatedly I am uploading a few photos from our trip to Melton Mowbray some three weeks ago, always one of our favourite events, it has a lovely atmosphere and it’s always great meeting friends.

I quite like this photo unlike the next one which was in fact the first one we took late on the first day when we suddenly realised we hadn’t taken a single photo and appear to be in a storage cupboard, although as it’s three weeks ago I have no idea where this interesting room might be!

And finally, we were nabbed by a more professional photographer who snapped this one.

We made a point of seeing Shirley and her girls last show ever! Quite a moving experience, I wish them all well in whatever they choose to do next.

Busy, busy, busy, we are having a massive clear out at home which I’m finding a tad stressful as I had no intention of clearing any of my delightful objet d’art and stuff and I have to admit I’m looking forward to going to the Great Central Railway at the weekend to get away from it all!

Here is a post for petrol heads who like myself are not keen on the electric revolution but here as some may say is the future. The only problem is, you’re going to have to win the lottery if you want one. Watch the film to the end, it’s very interesting, especially the comments on what people must have thought of the E type when it was new in the 1960’s.

Assuming this car charges as quickly as Jaguar have suggested and has a good range, the two weak links with electric cars, this really could be the future, if only we could afford one!

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE! It seems the expected price will be from £120,000 to £140,000 which seems very reasonable for a car with this specification but Jaguar always used to do this, with people asking , how can they do something this good at this price? We shall have to wait and see.

I have a feeling this new Jaguar is going to be considerably better than the dreadful advert they made earlier to sell the thing. Let’s hope so as I would hate to see yet another iconic British car manufacturer go to the wall.