awards night @ the ace- what a great night!!!

Kris, I suggested he put a row of tomato plants in the back for summer. He was having none of it ;D

Argh, what a palaver that was.

Surprisingly, I was late for this feted shindig. The list of excuses reasons for this are worthy of further exposition, so I will impart them below with much sound and fury.

I was all set to follow Oldbus \ Gtvsaviour over to Brian's yesterday after he picked 'my' Piazza up to use in his Mk2 Escort project. As I was winding my way through the intestinal roads linking Congleton and Holmes Chapel to the M6, I gave reanimation a bell to tell him I was on my way to the Ace.

He'd been trying to ring me the night previously as he wanted to know what I was doing. NSJC was up for 'Best Website' award and I had a nomination for 'Best Atmosphere Shot' from RR '09. Guilt set in as his Xantia was poorly and Nev, his next best bet for getting there, had a few issues with his MR 2 that prevented him from straying too far from home.

I decided to turn round and wait for them both to finish work. We finally left Manchester at 4PM, mindful of the crashfest on the M6 between junctions 15-19 that had reduced it to one lane. Obviating this route, and electing to go via the back roads, we sat fuming in hometime traffic for a good 2 hours.

Eventually we got onto the M6 at Stoke and went for it, cursing the seemingly arbitrary 50 limits. A couple of wrong turns saw us arrive in the C4 just after 9. Most people were packing up by then - luckily food was still being served.

After chowing down on hearty Ace fare, we got up and wandered around. KFW thrust some South African plates into my hand as I was on the way out to the car park and retrieved my HBL Piazza seat that he picked from Lichfield for me a good while ago. It's destined to meet v8chevette twixt base and welder, resulting in a new office seat for me a soon as I can get it over to Bolton.

I only had my C902 to hand, and the lighting at the Ace is legendarily poor. I did my best, and these two shots are the best out of the 20 or so that I got overall. I will try my best to clean the rest up in a short while.





Some namechecks:

Oldbus, GTVsaviour, BrianDamaged, KFW, B&D, PaulH, HoTwire, Namless, r0b0r.





With rean driving us back (um, thanks dude, my clutch hates you) we got back to Withington at about 2.30 AM. The Amazon is at home but with the current climate, a complete lack of a heater and a stuck NS front window put paid to its chances of making the 360 mile round trip a pleasant one.

Roll on the Summer Slam, and some better organisation.

dugong, you are legendary for your hassles getting to shows! ... glad you guys stuck with it, even if I only managed to meet you for 5 minutes... maybe next year we'll start at 8:30 and give you a fighting chance of getting there

J69, how do you deal with that at work, what with tie and cufflinks work attire? Do you don a classic motoring cape and googles a'la the exposed motoring era of a hundred years ago? All Terry Thomased-up? Or just keep clean duds at work and change over? What's it like doing this on a daily basis in 2010? Or have you gone to a modern for distressed weather driving days? Norm

1250mi in one day! Not easy to do even here. You have to average 60MPH for 21 hours to accomplish that (including gas stops, food, errands). That's truly non-stop, Dave. Let's go to Mongolia then, c'mon, off we go. You are what I'm looking for in a 50-50 split-of-driving team.

^^^Retro friendly workplace^^^ excellent, John! You wear your heart (and oily bits) on your sleeve. Any smart bossman would want a chap like you on his team. It's honest lifestyling.

tut tut