For those that know me, they know that I am a complete and utter Petolhead, however this is a trait that inherited completely from dad (and it must be said that mum was also a bit of a petrolhead as well). In his early days he was into two wheels, having a number of motorbikes ending up with his beloved BSA Shooting Star, he and mum use to go everywhere on the bikes. Moving to four wheels. I don’t know the complete history but I know it included a Triumph Razoredge, Triumph Herald Convertible, Triumph TR4a (I have only just noticed the theme here whist writing this now) Bond Equipe (no, you are wrong, this was a Triumph Vitesse with a coachbuilt body). Many years later, and Triumph no longer existed, dad got his dream car a Reliant Scimitar. I also need to mention that I have such fond memories of mum and her cars. As mentioned she was also a petrolhead, and I will never forget being taken on the school run with friends in a Hillman Imp with a race engine and mum racing anything and everything. They say parent live their lives through their offspring, and he did with me. Dad was a huge part of my motoring life and a huge positive influence with all of my cars, he was an ever present companion at all the trackdays that I have done and has been chief mechanic at most tracks in the UK as well as a few abroad. Dad enjoyed it so much that he didn’t mind the freezing cold winds of Doninton, the snow and hail at Cadwell or the rain at Spa, but all was forgiven and forgotten on the many sunny trackdays that we had together. On a number of occasions he helped me ‘test the setup’ of the car and drove a number of laps at quite a few of the circuits, testing the setup was his ways of saying ‘can I have a play’. Dad was happy out of the car as well as driving the car, and loved going and chatting with all the other drivers, and helping others fix problems. On a number of occasions I had to wait for him to finish helping others, before he would come and help me fix my car after a few excursions off the black onto the green. I don’t know what he has told others, but he admitted to me on a number of occasions that two of his memories (that he never seemed to forget, even when he was loosing his memory) was lapping Silversone and doing 185mph on a Polish motorway. (It was a brand new motorway that had only opened a couple of months before we were there.) We never really worried about speeding in Poland, as they only had Fiat 127s and couldn’t catch us, and on the rare occasions we were caught the fine was the equivalent of £5 or £10,. I will never forget the day that I was a dutiful son and did exactly what my father told me to do, and when we had a police car pull out behind us, he told me to put my foot down (even more) and so I did and we just left the police car way behind. That is not the end of it, we were quite surprised about a good hour later as we were leaving a roadside café after having had lunch, that a police car with blue light flashing pulled into the car park and out jumped two very irate policemen. Dad then very calmly said that we were not the ones that they were after as we have obviously been in the café and had only just finished lunch. After checking with the cafe that we had indeed had lunch there, the police then apologised to us and then drove off with lights still flashing after the speeding motorist that had passed them earlier. I don’t know how many other Bright Red TVRs on British number plates there were in Poland on that day but the police accepted that there were at least two. We did have to admit that we were quite impressed with the dogged determination and the zeal that the two policemen had for their job.