hour after hour in them. That’s where I started my lifelong obsession with those fairground grabbing games, the ones where you have to pick up the cuddly toy or some other bit of tat with a pincer on a hoist. Whenever I see one I have to have a go on it, and once I’ve started there’s no getting me off. I’ve been known to put £65 in one of those things at a time and walk away with nothing but a smile to show for it. Then again I don’t smoke and I don’t drink – well, not much – so I figure I’ll play on the grabby games if I want to.
Of all Scarborough’s arcades, there was one in particular that was always guaranteed to excite a young man looking to put his hand-eye coordination to the test. The biggest, most glitzy arcade on the front (well, it looked glitzy to me at the time) had this huge sign of red mirrored discs which used to glitter in the wind with the words ‘Henry Marshall’ in massive gold letters that lit up at night. It was a Mecca for excitable small boys like me with change in their pockets, and it was outside there one day when I was off to try my hand at grabbing something cheap and tacky that I discovered the other great obsession of my life.
There, right outside Henry Marshall’s amusement arcade, on a double yellow line, was a brand-new, shiny, British racing green Aston Martin V8 Vantage.
Now, I’d spent enough time in the back of my dad’s less than sporty MkI Escort playing ‘Spot the Car’ with my sister – ‘that’s my car, that’s your car, that’s my car…’ – to know a good car when I saw one, and I knew this was something else. It wasn’t just a brand-new Aston Martin, it was the Prince of Wales edition, with the V8 engine. Even then I could spot the V8 because it had different wheels and wider wheel arches than the standard one. To buy that car today would be expensive, £200,000 at least; back then it would have been astronomical. We’re talking a lottery money motor. Pure hand-built luxury. British racing green, chrome everywhere, soft top, cream leather interior with green piping, a private number plate – it looked the business. Absolutely amazing. And there was something about the fact that it was parked on the double yellow that made it even better. What did the owner care about parking tickets? He had an Aston Martin V8 Vantage Prince of Wales edition. He could afford to pay the fines.
I stood there gazing at it in awe, my 99 Flake dripping down my fingers. I was standing on tiptoes trying to get a proper look inside while my dad tried to drag me away, terrified that I was going to get Mr Whippy all over the paintwork. Like all the other dads of all the other kids who had suddenly surrounded it and were clawing for a better look and getting fingerprints and candyfloss all over it, my dad was desperate to prise me away from the window before the owner came back. There were kids everywhere shouting, ‘Dad, Dad, have you seen this?’ ‘Dad, Dad, what is it?’ ‘Dad, Dad, how much is it?’ ‘Dad, Dad, can we get one?’ while their embarrassed fathers tried to distract them and get them as far away from the vehicle as possible…until, that is, the owner’s 20-something girlfriend with never-ending legs and the shortest miniskirt you’ve ever seen came tottering along on her high heels and climbed into the passenger’s seat. Suddenly the dads weren’t in such a hurry to leave and it was the mothers who were insisting it was time to go.
Next thing, the car’s owner – and putting two and two together this must have been Henry Marshall himself because there couldn’t have been too many other people around those parts who could afford a car as spectacular as that – came out, made his way through the crowd, got in, fired it up – oh, the amazing roar of the V8! – then without so much as a wheelspin gracefully took off down the road.
I’d never seen anything like it. It was magic. I had been brought up with tractors and farm animals; you just didn’t see a thing like this every day. It was a defining moment. The one that makes you choose either women or cars (although it also made me realise that if I could afford a car like that, I could afford a girl like Henry Marshall’s to go with it). So I chose cars.
Flying isn’t really my thing. I’m not a big fan. I see it just as a necessity, as a way to get from A to Z without trekking all the way round the rest of the alphabet. Sometimes, flying is essential, but don’t ask me to like it. I’d rather drive. Now there’s a surprise.
I’m sure many factors have influenced my dislike (or should I say mistrust) of aviation, but the one that springs immediately to mind is my very first flight. It was not a pleasant experience. To be honest, it was heartbreaking and more than a little embarrassing.
The whole family had come to watch. It was a pretty big occasion on account of the fact that I’d made quite a big deal of it, told everyone they had to be there to witness the event. So there they all were, the entire family, gathered round to show their support and see a very young me take to the skies on his maiden voyage. Instead they got to witness the horror of my plane dropping from the sky like a stone just seconds after take-off, hurtling towards the ground, and crashing into a million little pieces – well, two big ones.
I’d spent about two months and all my pocket money building that bloody thing. It was a big two-channel remote control glider, the kind you launched with a piece of elastic on a hook. The idea was that you attached the little hook underneath to the piece of elastic which you’d wind up and then release, launching the glider into the air. You’d then fly it around working the rudder and ailerons with the remote control. At least that was the idea. Didn’t really work out that way on my first flight.
The family were assembled in the farmyard round the back of our house to see the big launch. My dad was winding the elastic and I was on the controller ready to steer it around the skies of North Yorkshire as soon as it was airborne. My dad was winding like a madman, checking with me all the time.
‘Ready? Ready?’ He wound some more. ‘Ready?’
‘Yep, ready!’
And with that it was off. My mum was squealing, ‘He’s built it, it’s flying, look everyone, it’s flying!’ like it was the Wright Brothers’ first flight or something, my dad was fit to collapse after all the winding, I was on the controller and, BANG!, it was on the ground in two very broken pieces. The bloody elastic hadn’t detached, so the plane went straight up and straight back down again. All those months of gluing together those bits of wood and stretching that plastic skin over the wings and shrinking it on with a hair dryer, all that for nothing. There in front of an audience of my nearest and dearest I had to go and pick it up and carry it back to the shed.
The humiliation.
However, never let it be said that I’m not determined. Not to be defeated, I went straight out and bought a bigger, better one, white with an engine included this time. Exactly the same thing happened. I spent months and months and all my pocket money on building the thing, took it out back to the hard standing we had where we used to put all the lorries and tractors, started it up, and it took off and just nose-dived straight back down again. After that it was years before I mustered up the courage or enthusiasm to have another go. To be honest, it’s only now that I’m just about starting to get the hang of it. I try because I hate giving up, but deep down I know flying really isn’t my thing.
Remote control cars, on the other hand, are fantastic. As well as the usual – Star Wars figures, Lego – I’ve always had toy cars. One of my earliest memories of tricking out a vehicle of any kind involves a toy car my granddad gave me one Christmas. It was a Ford Capri. Only I wanted a cabriolet, so on Boxing Day I went into my dad’s shed and tried to take the roof off with a Stanley knife. I did it eventually as well, but not before I nearly took my thumb off with a careless slip of the knife.
At first I’d gone at it with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. I managed to crack the plastic glass of the back windscreen with the screwdriver and then bent the roof back with the pliers, but to get the roof off was going to require something a little more lethal. So I got out the Stanley knife and started sawing away at the uprights on the back. I was sawing away, sawing away, sawing away and I sawed straight through the metal and into my thumb. When I went running into the house shouting ‘Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep!’ and