I was told there is a café in Cullompton (16 miles away, next door in Devon distances) that is devoted to car and bike (motorbike) enthusiasts. Bored at 2.30pm on a wet Wednesday afternoon with nothing to do, curiosity got the better of me. I decided to take the Porsche and put in an appearance. I wanted to listen to car music but when I looked at my iPhone, I noticed it wasn’t charging. No problem. Halfords was on the way. I would nip in and get a new lead. Then I noticed my hands were cold, looking down I could see my fingers had turned white thanks to Renauld disease, (the blood circulation condition that sounds like an unreliable car). No worries, Halfords had a bike store. I would buy some gloves as well.
The back road to Tiverton was a joy and the Porsche lapped it up. What a gem it is.
I parked and quickly found the USB cables, then went upstairs and a helpful person pointed me to the gloves. A simple task unfolded into an impossible mathematical problem. The thermally lined black gloves did not have the right size. Next to them were thermally lined bright luminous yellow gloves in the right size but, they were luminously yellow. Above them were Chirs Boardman thermally lined black gloves in the right size but for £45 instead of £18. For what seemed like an hour but was probably only forty-five minutes I swapped around taking them on and off, trying to decide what compromise to make. Too small, too yellow, or too expensive. In the end I went yellow. I paid and when I got back to the car the new lead didn’t charge. That meant the charger not the lead was duff. I went back in and got a new one. The bloke on the till said nothing but we both knew I had bought a new lead when it was the charger that was at fault. He raised a knowing eyebrow. I resigned a nod. Equipped with new everything. I was off again, with Apple Maps guiding me to the Re-fuel café and race centre.
I don’t know what I was expecting to see but what with the rain and school pickup traffic, I sailed straight past it. I did a J turn in a convenient side road and roared back. It was a large barn or hangar with a big car park. There were no other interesting cars, just a few school-run hatchbacks. I parked directly in front of a huge window and wondered if anyone looking out had noticed the arrival of a classic Porsche driven by an old man with luminous yellow hands. I took the gloves off, stowed them and got out wearing my Steve McQueen leather Gulf racing jacket and Laguna Seca Raceway baseball cap. I am not serious about these garments. They are self-parody. To aficionados they are a reference to an iconic era which people like me idolise. Our cars are the real garb. If my outfit makes me look a comic figure, it is meant to. I am embracing the futility of hanging on to the past. In the right company at the right time, it’s a look that provokes good natured ribbing and reminiscing. On a car enthusiast meeting night that would be the case, but this was 3.30 on a Wednesday afternoon. The café looked great. Posters, neon, memorabilia, car tat but it was existentially, at this moment, an empty shed with a polished concrete floor, a food counter and a clientele of Mums with children under the age of 11.
I think the young man behind the counter had decided I was a ropey Steven McQueen impersonator whose real name was probably Reg. “Can I help you?” he said, sounding a bit like my therapist. I think he meant it. I wanted to tell him my name wasn’t Reg (though he was right about the rest of it).
“Can I have a fried egg sandwich and a black coffee, please?”. “Americano?”, he asked. “No Englisho” I replied pretending that I thought he was asking about my nationality. I was too convincing. He did think I thought he was asking about my nationality. Another failed “Dad joke”. Never mind.
He told me he would bring it to the table. Looking as I did at that time of day and at my age, choosing a table wasn’t straightforward. The place was full of mainly empty tables, so should I sit on a table near the Mums with young children (pervy) or on the other side of the room where I would look like a sad and lonely old git on a rainy Wednesday afternoon with nothing to do except dress up as Steve McQueen. Which in fact I was. I sat near the Mums but with my back towards them.
The table had some great leaflets about the venue. This was my kind of place. It had the Apex Race Centre simulator room where two players could sit in proper racing car seats, with motion generators throwing you around and big screens giving you a very realistic driving experience. The idea was to challenge someone else and race them head-to-head. I was up for it. I looked around. The next oldest person with a comparable interest was nine. The day when old blokes could challenge 9-year-olds, who aren’t their grandsons, to an arcade game died with Jimmy Saville. I sat there forlorn. Maybe I could challenge one of the Mums to burn outs in the car park?, but there was a sign forbidding that.
Then I got a flashback to an occasion twenty years ago when it snowed and settled in Berkshire. A very rare event. An opportunity not to be missed. I smashed up the Veg-e-table that I had made from discarded pallets to grow vegetables on and in very little time made it into a sledge that looked vaguely like a … sledge. I proudly went indoors and asked my son, who was then about nine years old, if he wanted to come sledging, totally convinced he would run to the door and grab his hat and coat. Far from it. He barely looked up from playing FIFA. I should have known. When I had bought a train set and a Scalextric I had the same experience. Instead of playing with the physical toy, he led me patronisingly to the PlayStation and showed me train simulator and Grand Turismo and invited me to reflect on how hollow and deprived we were with playing with mere toys in my generation. Except, I wasn’t having it. I wanted to go. I wanted to sledge, and I needed a bona fide child with me, or I would be the only adult on the hill sledging amongst the nine-year-olds and that would look pervy. He came and he liked it but not enough to go again. After that I went on my own. People could think what they wanted. You don’t get many chances to sledge in Berkshire.
Having replayed this memory against the backdrop and noise of boys of a similar age to my son on that day, I was wiped out by a wave of retirement emotion. With his back to everyone else the sad old, failed Steve McQueen impersonator faced dark reality. I was living history, just a sea chest of memories coming to the end of his passage. I had my Porsche, I had my Gulf racing jacket, I have actually driven real racing cars around the legendary Laguna Seca track in California that kids love on their PlayStation, but my relevance to today’s world was hanging by a thread. A retired, going nowhere, has been. The wave that hit me was cold and frosty. Nobody could see but my eyes teared up. Memories and reality. Toxic. It didn’t last long. My son popped up on WhatsApp from Indianapolis, where he is doing his Motorsport Eng Masters. (He got to the physical world in the end). He asked what I was doing, and we digitally bantered for long enough to justify another coffee. That cheered me up. I miss him and wish he was still in the UK. When it was time to go, I looked at the junk on sale in the shop and bought myself a unique, high quality Gulf racing belt in premium baby blue leather with an orange Gulf logo on the buckle. £35. The young man at the coffee counter took my money and I didn’t give a shit what he thought. I went outside, got in my Porsche, put my yellow gloves on and drove off.
Home
