More Dumb Weather

The best thing to do when the temperatures climb high into the eighties at the arse end of September is get out of the office and find a pavement café somewhere out of the sun.
Usually in England the few tables you see outside cafés are there to catch the rain or to attract visiting Norwegians who find that the ice forming on top of their coffees reminds them of home.

Yesterday it was too hot to eat more than a prawn and avocado doorstep (the two gay gals who run this café sure know how to make a proper sarnie - fresh-baked, hand-cut bread stuffed with high fat goodness) but I'm making the most of it as this is England and tomorrow it might snow.

Dumb Weather

 It's still September, so why the heck are the leaves starting to turn?

 I checked back in my autumn colour posts and found that this doesn't usually start until the first week in November.

 And why is it eighty degrees and getting hotter?

 I think someone set the English climate on "shuffle" this year.

Dumb, dumb, dumb weather.

These are the trees along the river bank outside my office, by the way. They should be green for another month at least. I have a feeling we're in for a truly sucky winter.

Wednesday Window - Lonesome Pine

Another window from Phil's last visit to Rome.

That has to be one of the most beautiful houses I've ever seen.

A Little Over-compensation, Perhaps?

WTF Monday - Goodwood Special

Got one of these parked in your garage?
Pretty stylish, huh?

It's actually exceedingly useful. I know what it does but I'd love to hear your guesses.

Under The Hood

More gratuitous Car Porn today.

Time to get down and dirty under the hood.

Addendum:
Yes, thank you, Phil, I know it's not a hood but a bonnet.
However, I do have to pander to a mostly Colonial readership and picturing them staring blankly at their monitors, searching the photos in vain for signs of ladies' headgear is a mental image too pitiful to bear for a man of my generous disposition.
So let's just take a look under the bonnet/hood (delete where applicable), shall we?

Nuff said …

Saturday Statuary - Douglas Bader At Goodwood

Those of you (i.e.: the Colonial Contingent) who may be unfamiliar with Old Tin-Legs can check out his astonishing story here.

Ouch! Expensive Outtakes From Goodwood 2011

When I stress each year that Goodwood is about RACING classic race cars rather than simply parading around in them I am not kidding.
Every year, the world's top racing drivers (and mad enthusiasts like Crown Prince Joachim of Denmark - Danish royalty has come a long way since Hamlet) flock here to push themselves and the priceless vintage cars to the limits and beyond.

When it goes right it looks like this: an incomparably gorgeous 1953 Jaguar C-Type drifting sideways around Lavant corner in a berserk power-slide, the driver desperately sawing away at the huge steering wheel while just behind him a beautiful 1955 Aston Martin DB3S lurks, ready to pounce as they launch into the straight.
The noise as they blast past you is ear-buggeringly magnificent.

Or if you fancy some Italian, how about that spectacular 1955 Ferrari 857S we saw just the other day, tearing past an equally sexy (and gloriously named) 1953 Alfa Romeo 3000 "Disco Volante" as they enter the long straight out of Lavant?

That's what it looks like when it all goes right …

When, however, it doesn't go right …
This is what happened when poor Bob Birrell (er … a racing driver INSTRUCTOR) disregarded his own lessons and slammed his 1963 Brabham Ford BT6 Formula Junior race car into the tyre barrier after a dizzying spin.

Fret not, for it will be rebuilt and he'll be back racing it next year … probably a tad more carefully.

And here, on the video screen opposite our grandstand, Desiré Wilson (yes, ladies, you can crash race cars, too) going straight through the chicane wall and into the barrier at the start of the the home straight. She made quite a few dents in her 1961 lightweight racing E-Type Jag.
Oops. That's not going to polish out.

Another messy demolition of some priceless automotive history, caught on the big screen for all to see.

Let's take a slightly wide line … Wahey!

Smokin' … how to wreck your tyres, fish-tailing all over the track trying to keep control.

Er … I think I broke it.

Whee!
Slideways across the grass.

One very fast E-Type …
One very stopped E-Type.
I wonder what the driver is telling the marshalls.

Hey, let's take the corner sideways!

Eek!

Well, we can't all get it right, can we?
The spills are all part of the thrills at Goodwood.

In The Paddock With The Lotus Boys

I make no excuses for today's post: a purely self-indulgent wallow in the Lotus paddock at Goodwood.

Here's Phil chatting to Nick (the Lotus racing driver who took him racing up the Hill at the Festival of Speed - see the end of today's post to re-live the in-car video) and the boys as they ready the cars for the day's racing. Notice the frenzy of activity as Nick cleans up the diff and the boys play "I wonder where in the gearbox this little bit goes."

Many thanks to Nick for donating a couple of team armbands allowing Phil and myself to access areas barred to mere mortals. More of that another day.

 For now, just inhale that gorgeous smell of burning motor oil as the guys tune up some of the most iconic classic race cars in history.
We'll see them racing later.

Enjoy the porn.

Planes In The Rain

It's not just cars and girls at Goodwood, there's aviation porn, too!

This year there were seven Spitfires buzzing around during the day but unlike most years the only Mustang on show was parked on the ground with the Mustang dealership's sexy motors.

Pretty, huh?

Another visitor from the Colonies was the legendary Sally B, here on her first of hopefully many visits.

Star of course of the movie Memphis Belle …

… here's Sally in all her racy, cheesecake glory.

Do click on this one. The plane was way too big to get in one shot so I had to stitch this together from four separate photos in Photoshop.
I do like that polka dot dress with the black faux-fur wrap down in the bottom left corner.

Quick addendum: Bummer! It appears that Blogger now reduces the sizes of your photos so even clicking on this only brings it up a quarter the size of the image I posted. And selecting "View Image" doesn't help either. A pox on Blogger and their cheap ways!

When I was a kid, my favourite plane was the Supermarine S6B, the English racing seaplane that won the Schneider Trophy and broke the world air speed record in 1931.
Designed by R.J.Mitchell, it was a thing of beauty, only surpassed in sheer grace and power by his later design, the incomparable Spitfire itself.
This is one of only two survivors from the original six built. It's not in flying condition but perhaps one day we'll see it in the skies again.

Here's another spiffy Brit: the Fairey Swordfish, all neatly folded up for carrier duty. These little guys torpedoed the crap out of the German fleet in the long years of struggle before America realised there was a war going on.

I caught this Spitfire taking off into the evening sun as we were leaving the course. The weather had been too crappy to get any decent photos of their earlier flying displays, but there's always next year.

This is always the highlight of the weekend's flying. Goodwood is based at the old wartime RAF West Hampnett airbase and in honour of the base's heroic rôle in the Battle of Britain, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight graces us with its glorious presence each year. Usually there's a Spitfire and a Hurricane accompanying the Lancaster but this year we got a brace of Spitfires instead (and a swallow, which you can see trailing the Lanc if you click and blow the image up larger).

As the planes flew over, the air thrumming with the heartwarming roar of Merlin engines, the clouds started to break at last and the Memorial Flight caught the first rays of sunshine we'd seen all day.
Seeing (and hearing) these guys is always a lump in the throat moment for me.

Here's to next year.