The Bentley is in for a service today. Can you believe, it’ll be the first time the brakes have needed replacing in 10 years, though in fairness it has done only 90,000kilometers, and of course my driving style rarely includes braking.
While it’s in I’m tooling around in the Peugeot 206. This is the most unreliable car I’ve ever owned, not even surpassed by the Citroen ZX which was stupendously unreliable (and made by the same company, as it happens...).
The Pug – designed by the French but made in England, really what chance did it have - is eight years old but within 14,000km, so about 8000 miles in old money, I had to have the power steering replaced twice. The litany of other problems is too long to list here, or anywhere for that matter.
Anyhow, on the Bentley...back when I was a full-time motoring journalist I used to go on advanced driving courses, partly so I could write about them and partly to make me a better driver.
When I was in the US about 15 years ago I managed to get on one of the more bizarre courses. Organised out of Ford Bragg in North Carolina, it was an evasive driving course for secret service and covert operations people. I could write about it but you know, no names, etc, otherwise I actually do think they could have killed me.
The instructor, a sergeant with steel blue eyes and one of those crew cuts you don’t want to touch because it will injure you, said on the first day, “Gentlemen, your automobile is your weapon.” I said, “but what if it is a Bentley?” which they all tittered about.
“Sir,” he drawled, “the Bentley is your finest automotive weapon of all time.” We all laughed and then he shouted at me, “Sir! If you do interrupt me one more time I will take your bootlaces and tie you to that damn Bentley and drive it off the nearest cliff edge, sir! Do I make myself clear! Sir!”
Yes, it was a lot of fun and I never knew you could use a Bentley ashtray to disembowel a man.
The main point is, one of the people on the course, a bloke called Jerome from Alabama, was in the Navy Seals which is the US’s equivalent of the SAS, only they swim better. Jerome is a fine person.
Imagine my surprise back on Friday when I saw Jerome in the school playground. Oh yes.
I thought I must be mistaken (though I never forget a face) because he bent over fussing over a little girl who would be his daughter. He lifted his head and looked right at me and smiled, so he knew I was there. He patted the daughter on the head and she skipped off. He walked over to me and stood by my side as the Principal called assembly to order and he said out of the side of his mouth, “Used that Bentley on anyone yet, sir?”
It seems, coincidence of coincidences, that Jerome is now a professor of oceanography, has married an Argentinean woman, speaks fluent Spanish as well as Alabaman, lives just up the road from us and has two daughters, one of whom is in my son’s class. They’ve just moved here from Buenos Aires.
They’re coming around for a meal on the weekend so hopefully I’ll find out what he’s been up to in the last decade, and perhaps more importantly, what he’s really doing here in the mountains...