Volksworld Show 2007

So the Volkswagen season has arrived again! Woo Hoo! The first date in the calendar is the Volksworld Show (which takes place at Sandown Park), pics of the last two shows can be found here and here (if you are interested, of course)...

However, things (once again) didn't go easy, in fact, pretty far in the exact opposite direction actually...the "Curse of Colin" (as it is becoming known) struck again, and this time, it was personal!

First off, we stopped in Reigate to get a bit of cash out (had a shopping list for the autojumble), Flyingpops parked next to the tiny Pizza Hut and I hopped out and walked jovially up the road, humming to myself, around the corner, popped the card into the Barclays cash machine, grabbed the money and the print out, came around the corner again (tucking it away into wallet) and noted, casually, that Flyingpops was no longer sat in her seat, but in the back of the bus, not only talking to someone on her mobile, but also waving at a passing VW Beetle ("Aw", I thought...)...but as the occupants of the Beetle passed me by, I spotted, with no little amount of alarm, that they were all looking back at Colin and were in a heated debate, pointing in that direction - my narrowed eyes flicked back down the road and I *immediately* (less than a heart beat) broke into a world record beating sprint as a car swerved round Colin, driver gesticulating rudely...

It was rolling down the f*cking hill...!!!!

Flyingpops was none the wiser, I could see her, poking around in the boot, still talking on her mobile - everything went into slow motion, I could see Colin gradually getting faster and faster, more cars clocking what was happening and swerving out of the way every second - I ran into the road, wildly waving my hands to warn oncoming drivers we had a problem (God only knows what they must have thought I was doing)...and what felt like an eternity later, I managed to grab hold of the passenger door, screamed something unintelligible (probably) at Flyingpops and used all my strength to try and slow poor Colin down before we really did hit something...

She calmly continued her telephone conversation, but did hurry up to the drivers section and stamp on the break (luckily before I was stuck by anything, my adrenalin fuelled strength failed or Colin was bruised)...*phew*!

I think it took about ten minutes before my pulse returned to normal...and when it did, I replayed the whole thing in my mind (in wild eyed silence), but with Mr Bean, or "One foot in the grave" canned laughter accompanying our every move...honestly, you couldn't make it up any better than that, and you would think that's all anyone deserved for one day...but, dear reader, we aren't at the end of this sorry tale... :(

We got over to Flyingpops' folks, gathered her mum with her T25 (so it was now "Colin and Co." I guess) and headed back-road way to Esher, didn't get a shot, but a number of their bins in the town centre said "Please keep Cambridge Tidy", which I thought was a little odd)...Anyway, got to Sandown park (without further incident), weather was even starting to look promising (nothing like as good as on the last two outings, but hey) -


- I cooked us some nice breakfast (did toast and filter coffee for Flyingpops and her mum and I had Earl Grey with a nice dry cure bacon sarnie) -

- we finished eating, got all our stuff together, started locking up the buses, Flyingpops' mum went to close her side door, and as she did so, the back window just literally fell to bits!!! Glass showering all over the place! WTF??

So, while she got on the phone to her insurance people, Flyingpops and I got creative with a plastic bag and some gaffer tape (as it was threatening to rain) -

- and then had to leave her with the buses awaiting the promised window crew's arrival...so we had a little walk around, spotted these Beetle jelly moulds and cake cutters -

- had a nose around the show and shine (best of the year at Volksworld usually ;) -

- and the auto jumble -

- oh, spotted these hilarious stickers playing on the old classic EMPI "Caution, Do not lower the window at speeds in excess of 120 M.P.H.", should have bought the cooker one really... ;)

- A few more sights follow -










- Oh and check this out, a new drag racing flat-4, in the style of a massively lowered bus! Back view -

- and front view -

- can't wait to see what it can do down the strip at Bug Jam!!! ;) Bought some new hub caps for Colin (as we only had two, and they were both plastic and broken) -

- and here they are in situ, I think I need to get the wire brush out and pain the wheels though, they look a bit stange at the moment, so shiny against the rust... ;)

We got back and Flyingpops (finding the glass hadn't been fixed yet) went into one of her "episodes" that one day will perhaps result in a compulsory anger management course, and verbally assassinated a large number of weekend call centre staff, who will no doubt go home and commit suicide (well, the bad ones, anyway), and it finally appeared that there was no way that bit of glass was going to be fixed today. So, I volunteered to guard camp (watched a movie on the Shinco, no worries) while they did a tour of the stuff inside, then we found some tarp in the back of Flyingpops' mum's bus, and wedged that in for the drive home...

Not a day that went quite as expected... ;)

Anyway, loads more pics here on my flickr stream (if you like this kind of thing)... :)

Update - a bit of Gickr action for you -