Last Saturday I had to fly up to Hanover for a 6 month check-up and maintenance treatment; I suppose I could have flown directly from Malaga to Hanover, but I took the opportunity to fly via London and spent the day with my son and grandson. Then on Sunday flew to Germany, ready for Monday morning treatment. Hanover was freezing cold and snowing most of the week, the less said about that the better!
I flew back to London this Saturday and spent the afternoon with my daughter, so that's the family caught up with. By a quirk of fate, this weekend was the London Bike show at the Excel centre, but also the London Classic car show at the same venue, which was most unusual. As I had the day free I decided to hit them both, and my son decided to come up and meet me there. I got up early and drove through East London, got to the Excel before they opened so was one of the first in line when the Bike show opened at 9am. I have to admit I was a little disappointed, it wasn't half as good as the NEC show in Birmingham I went to last November.
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| New Z900 RS still looks nice - too pricey for me though |
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| CCM Scrambler was lovely bit of kit, handmade but again too pricey at 10k |
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| New twin cylinder RE, nice for under £6k new! |
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New V4 Ducati engine nicely made
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The new Royal Enfield with the new twin-cylinder engine looked to be a good buy at just under £6k, other than that it was just the usual stuff, although the scantily-clad dolly birds were notable by their absence this year, guess that's the modern age we're living in, eh?
After I'd been there about an hour, my son turned up. He was on a bit of a tight schedule, so we decided to go straight over to the Classic car show. We were virtually the first people in the hall, as you can see we were strolling around the big empty spaces taking it all in virtually alone. That soon changed though!! There was a very eclectic collection of cars there, all of them completely out of my price range, but all were absolutely immaculate.
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| Plenty of empty space |
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| Lamborghini Muira |
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| Lovely Fiat 124 spider |
Actually there was one car that really caught my eye, this lovely little Fiat spider was immaculate, only one lady owner and 50,000 miles, spotless inside and out. I sat in it, looked at the engine, fell in love with it. The seller even pointed-out how cheap it was at £22,500. Must buy a lottery ticket!
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| Very nice & rare Citroen convertible |
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| Loved the engine in this original GT40 |
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| Gull-wing doors meant this Merc wouldn't fit in the photo, but digging the matching suitcase in the back |
The hall itself was absolutely packed with cars, then in the centre they had a track laid out with various classics driving up and down,most notable was ex-world champion brummie Nigel Mansell, who managed to drive his old F1 car at a fair speed down the track, do donuts at one end then back again all with a huge grin on his face! A much better experience that the bike show, especially with all the upmarket stalls selling wine & stinky cheese, none of your burgers and coke in here!
All-in-all we had an enjoyable day there, the son left around 1pm to get the train home, I hung around, got some veggie lunch then back to my little house in Essex. I'm off tomorrow morning to fly back to Malaga, but here's where I go off the rails a bit, so to speak.
I got a bit angry and upset during the week in Hanover; got some results that show that pesky cancer is making a comeback. After a couple of days soul-searching, I decided, well, actually I didn't decide much apart from wanting to forget about it all. So for some reason that I can't actually remember now in the cold light of day, I booked myself on a flight to Aruba next week. So I have to fly to Malaga Monday, collect my clothes and move out of my rented flat, then back via London to Amsterdam then on to Aruba.
To be honest, I have visited the island before; when I was working in Venezuela the company used to send us there to renew our visas, I remember it had white sand, blue sea and was hot all the time. I also have thousands of air-miles with KLM that have to be used this year or I lose them so I'm getting the flight down for free.
So I'm going to be a beach bum for a month, try to face up to my problems and figure-out what to do when I get back.
