A few days ago Ollie of Blog F1 suggested my writing a post of memories of the British GP. That would be fine, I thought, if only I had any. The sad fact is that I have never actually been to Silverstone to watch the GP, even though I lived not far north of the circuit and it was easy for me to access.
Silverstone
The problem was twofold: I never had the money to pay the ridiculous entrance fee and the GP invariably coincided with an institution that has long since gone the way of all flesh - the Coventry Fortnight, as it was known. In those days, I was working in a Coventry car factory for my sins and was thus subject to this Coventry Fortnight, a period of two weeks in July when the factories shut down and released all of us worker bees upon the pleasures of the outside world. And the roads from the Midlands to the coast would become choked with our beaten up old vehicles in a slow and congested crawl in search of freedom.
Fate decreed that the first weekend of the Coventry Fortnight was always the one chosen for the British GP and so, on that Saturday, I would find myself in a car laden with family and piles of luggage, braving the traffic jams on the M5 in the quest for the sea. Britain must have had some good weather then for my memory speaks only of hours spent in endless lines of cars just north of Bristol with the sun beating down and temperatures rising to the bounds of patience. And all the while Silverstone receded behind us as questions of television reception in whatever forsaken outpost of civilization we had chosen this time occupied my mind.
It was a hit and miss affair, this business of televisions in rented cottages or trailers in a forgotten corner of Cornwall or Wales. True luxury was to find color at the end of one's journey, it being far more common to grudgingly accept that once again the GP would be in black and white on a tiny portable set. Reception, too, was variable and many are the GPs I have viewed through a mist of snow despite all tweaking of the arial in vain hope of a clearer screen.
But Sunday afternoon was my time, a space allowed by the family in view of my sacrifice of yet another year to the needs of the holiday. And even small mercies must be appreciated, there being at least one year when arrival disclosed the awful fact of there being no television at all (oh rural Wales, do you linger still in the backwash of the 19th century?). The radio is small comfort in such desperate times.
Looking back, I realize that this tradition of always missing the great event has colored my view and given the GP almost mythical status. I know Silverstone well, having driven past it on many occasions, and the sense of it scrawled upon its open expanses, perched upon its lonely plateau, is with me still. And it was this that filled in the imagination as I followed the unfolding drama through blurred and faded images upon an ancient TV. It may have been the one GP of the year that was, for me, an exercise in filling in the blanks, the only race forever run in shades of grey and drifting snow, but it was ours, the one that defined them all, the British Grand Prix.
Perhaps it was the same for most of the inhabitants of that happy isle and time. It may be that, throughout the land, the GP became a matter of escape for a few hours from the demands of a family holiday in the wilds, a secret feeding of the fanatical addiction in nooks and crannies of the folded mountains and jagged shoreline.
Certain it is that the result of the race could make or break my holiday, all too often the demise of some preferred hero setting a background of discontent through the days to come. It is strange how rarely that particular race gave me the winner of my choice; perhaps it was a punishment for missing all those chances to attend, for not risking family disapproval and finances at least once along the way.
Ah well, what's done is dung and I am left mute when discussion turns to experience of the British GP. Curmudgeonly it may be but one thought rescues me in my isolation: I never did like crowds anyway...