Carry On Car Show

What goes on behind the folding chairs

It’s summertime. There’s a field somewhere in the Great British Countryside. Random bunting. Volunteers in reflective jackets. The whiff of a barbecue. All it needs now is some classic cars.

This is where I come in and deliver some serious spoilers. There are no pictures of the event in question and there are few revelations or insights. Worst of all I’m not the right person to deliver this story. My good friend Kenny is, but we will get to that shortly. Also the names have been changed to protect those who didn’t have much choice but to work with me to make all this happen.

First of all I had no idea I was going to write about this. It’s something I am involved with every year. I just turn up, do my duty and help raise funds to keep the village hall open for another year. This year though there was a twist. Money.

After many years, well over a decade of allowing one of the main attractions just to turn up, park and break out the folding chairs, there would now be a charge of….one English pound. You would not think that was remotely controversial, but do stay tuned.

I don’t really have very much in the way of background dirt as to how it all gets organised. Essentially a very nice lady called Karen who chairs the parish council and is on the village hall committee does the risk assessment, where the possibility that a Humber Snipe staff car containing someone dressed as Field Marshall Montgomery might go off dessert rat piste, is more than accounted for. When it comes to rounding all the cars up, initially that was a bloke in the village with a Willys Jeep and plenty of contacts in the military vehicle community, but it has spiralled somewhat since then. There are no adverts or paid promotions.

Everyone in Norfolkshire and beyond knows that on Bank Holiday Monday you can turn up at our village green on a classic bike, in a car, something military, especially a tractor, sometimes a bus and have a jolly good day out with your vehicle, loved one and deck chairs.

This year I have to shake a plastic bucket. I’ve done this before in the main public car park which is a nearby farmer’s field and that was something of a challenge as not everyone wanted to donate any cash money for their space. They would just stare straight ahead or simply fail to come to a complete stop for the briefing. That meant they didn’t get the cow pat warning. That was a shame as should they slip and fall as a result of contact with the cow output they may need the emergency services and we had allowed for that as half the takings went to Air Ambulance.

I knew the score and now could transfer these bucket rattling skills to the Village Green. I wasn’t simply asking for a pound, but also telling them where to go, in the nicest way possible manner of course. Previously left to their own parking devices, the actual location was sub contracted to a couple of great lads Kieran and Rob positioned a good hundred yards away. We did an early huddle to decide strategy, which was basically ‘us on the gate point them in your (the lads) direction then you slot them next to each other’...

Because this is a working cricket pitch, it was down to me and Johnathan, did I mention Johnathan? Well, I’m not doing this first money grabbing shift alone, so my neighbour, friend and ‘in bits’ Willys Jeep owner is doing it with me. He’s been roped in and the complication is he fundamentally disagrees with charging anything at all for parking anywhere at all.

Not unreasonably he believes that the cars are the entertainment. I do have a lot of sympathy with this view and do feel that many car shows do take the absolute almighty michael when it comes to entrance fees. This is a quid though and none of it goes in a promoters pocket, it ends up in a charitable pot that keeps the village hall open so the retirement club can use it, drink tea and complain about anything they damn well please.

My issue with some of the people who turn up inside these annoying classics is that they bring their own packed lunch, sit on their bloody deck chairs and socialise amongst themselves. It would be much better if they ventured over to the other side of the village green to get a burger from the open air barbie, with the option buy a cup of tea, cake or bacon roll from inside the village hall. If that is too much bother my lorry (Series 3 Land Rover) is equipped with a fridge to provide ice creams. Not only that there’s a hot water urn for hot beverages as well as fizzy pop and healthy bottled water. All proceeds go to the village hall. So the very least those grumpy classic vehicle custodians can do is put a pound in the flipping bucket.

Johnathan reckons it could all turn nasty and potentially a Hell’s Angel could stomp on my head. Except that it’s mainly old blokes on Nortons. They could still park an 850 Commando on my foot, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I’ve worn him down so Johnathan is on board with the rattling bucket thing and before I distracted myself with all this explanatory nonsense which adds nothing to the story, here is the deal. Heavy stuff has to be parked on the edges well away from the cricket pitch. That means most of the military stuff, tractors, and lorries on the fringes. The bikes, well the uncouth elderly owners, who could cause all the trouble, according to Johnathan, are going next to the cricket pavilion out of the way. Meanwhile the lads in the middle are slotting all the cars on the grass, very much not in marque order which certainly could cause someone to get all stroppy at some point. Ideally when I’m no longer on duty.

It’s 8.30am and the doors, there are no doors, this is a village green, is open. First customer of the day is a Ford F150 pick up from the late ‘80s which does not seem especially classic, but there is a further debate as to whether it is heavy enough to be perimeter parked, or should it go with the everyday classics? No, we need to start the lines somewhere and ‘park next to that vulgar America pick up’ would be a very good way to kick things off.

At this point I should tell you again that if you are expecting to see pictures of me and Johnathan in our high vis jackets, lots of candid shots of owners and their classics, well, prepare to be very disappointed. This was effectively just one of the jobs I had to do that day, I was nominally in charge, so taking happy snaps was the last thing on my mind. If you want to know what a competent properly curated record of a car show looks like with considerable wit and decent photography, then follow Kenny Smith on Twitter, sorry X @HiKennys. It is worth your time not least because Kenny covers some wonderful shows in his neck of the North Western woods and beyond. Not only that, there is a point to Kenny’s selfless travels because towards the end of the year you get to vote in a definitive top ten, the legendary #HiKCoTY

As I can just about cope with one show a year and any images you see here are from a couple of years ago, but as most of the cars are the same it doesn’t matter. Except that the majority of the vehicles I checked in, apart from a huge Plymouth, I’d never seen any of them before. Never mind, I’ll just use words and paint pictures that old fashioned way.

Who would have thought that taking the roof off a Vauxhall Viva would work? Well Crayford did and I told the owner what a pretty convertible he had. Obviously he knew that already, rather like the gentleman in a Nissan Micra. Not a K10, or a K11 for that matter, but a bug eyed K12. Bravely he was travelling 4 up and had a cardboard sign on the dashboard which said ‘Classic Car’. You have to admire his confidence and we took his pound of course as it would have been four against two. An old bloke in a Ford C-Max was not so lucky. He was easily ancient enough to qualify as a person of historic interest, but had missed the general car park and saw the funny side when I redirected him and the Max. Indeed, it was fun spotting the cars that drove past rather than parking up and giving us a pound. A Rover 213, a proper ‘80s one passed twice and then came to park in its rightful place. Nice owner too.

Incredibly a Volvo 240 and a Volvo 740 went past but did not swing in. I reckon they were working although there could have course be a nearby dedicated Swedish estate show except the 240 went past yet again with a load of boxes in the back before I clocked off.

I did feel as though I was in something of a ‘70s Custom Car time slip. Modified Fords were the order of the early part of the day, Anglias, Prefects and the odd fast Escort. There were waves of quite wonderful things. Me and Johnathan sometimes divided up the arrivals according to our predilections. I quite often got the minis, he had much of the military.

Then there was the bit where a full sized coach turned up to go and park next to the articulated tractor units, flat beds and other commercials that lived in the village. That’s when the ruddy faced cricket club official went a mad in my direction as the bus had made a close pass to the cricket square. One would have thought it had churned up the infield and totalled the pavilion. I told him no harm done and that he should busy himself by moving the covers as agreed, or I’ll make sure that something agricultural takes up that space. Not on his Christmas card list.

Just in case you wondered about how demanding a pound with menaces was progressing, well it was going rather well. Everyone coughed up, a several gave a fiver and said keep the change and some people arriving in convoy would pay for their colleagues behind. One gentleman in a Cobra was rather insistent that he cover the red Triumph Stag right behind. ”She wouldn’t have come otherwise”.Clearly she wasn’t at all happy’ and scowled at me from beneath the padded roll bar. As pissed off as she clearly was, no harm done and pound dutifully paid. No one one is getting away with it today.

Except that, crash bang wallop, a GMC two and half tonner has just breached our security gate (we don’t have any gate) and is heading towards the ex-army enclave we have been constructing, even with the relatively lightweight Willys because they always congregate together anyway. I am now in hot pursuit on foot to claim the village hall’s pound.

The GMC driver is dressed in fatigues and is obviously aggrieved. “I tell you what, you give me twenty quid to cover my fuel and we’ll call it quits.” I smile and ask for the pound again and he reluctantly fishes one from the depths of his olive green pocket. Johnathan explains to me that he had a point, because back in the old days army drivers would indeed get travel money for bringing their military hardware and fancy dress to the show. However, this isn’t a commercial operation, it is volunteer one.

Back to the arrivals. There was a lot of very diversely decent classic car kit. Everything from a concours Jaguar XK120 to a rat look Austin 7. There was even the odd retro-mod like a Renault 10 with expertly blistered arches. I’d chat, when possible, with the owners and was intrigued by a rather neat and tidy Triumph Dolomite 1500HL. I was invited inside to savour the utterly unrestored roof lining, stained with a decade or two of nicotine. “I wouldn’t touch it, I don’t smoke, but it is part of the car’s history.” Hard to disagree, except that I would have bleached that back to factory (Canley) originality.

Meanwhile, I flirted with a lady in an immaculate Canvas roofed Series 3 Land Rover Pick up. Hers was an ‘83 the same as mine, I told her to buy a Cornetto from Mrs Bangernomics. She never did, but paid the pound with a smile and that’s what the day was all about.

After two hours I was able to pass on the High Vis to next door neighbour Matt. My work at the front end of the Classic Car Show was over, but now it was time to provide the refreshments.

This is how real classic car shows work. Not the sponsored, corporate events with lanyards, marketing departments and rip off prices. It’s all about the volunteers, without them, nothing gets done, money remains un-raised and there is nothing to see on the green.

See you next year. The Village Hall won’t save itself you know.

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