25th June – 1st July 2017
I have been a person who has been brought up on cars. The family business is cars and when I was younger my Dad imported cars into the country from places like Japan, Korea and China. My brother now runs the company.
Because of the family business I got to go to the motor show, the royal show and a lot of other motor events each year. I remember always loving them. My sister and I would always walk around collecting as much free merchandise as we could carry. It was always a fun day.
However I have absolutely no interest in cars. To me as long as a car gets me from A to B I am happy. I don’t care how many cylinders it has or how fast it goes or what size engine it is.
This week I feel like I have spent everyday in the car. One place we went to was Goodwood Festival of Speed. Out of all the motor events I have been to I have never been to Goodwood.
It was very different to the shows I went to as a kid. One thing that I found different was the fact that there was so many really old cars there and they raced them at the event.
Matt and my brother found all these cars very fascinating. There were cars from so many years, some going all the way back more than 100 years. There were cars that had raced in races like F1, Le Mans, NASCAR and many more. I have to say I found it mildly interesting.
There were a few cars there that were made or won races in the year I was born.
The thing that really hit home to me was how well they have been looked after over the years. They were someone’s pride and joy and in many cases these cars had been lovingly restored.
If I had seen a car from the year I was born I would have thought it would only be fit for the scrap heap, but these were still going strong and still winning races. Their value had gone up considerably over the years but despite this they would use them, race them and they would sometimes crash. But they were still being used for the exact purpose they were built for. It shows that when you look after something it can go on for a long time.
I think the same applies to humans. If we don’t look after our bodies we could end up on the scrap heap a lot sooner than you should be. I think that was the place I was at 18 months ago.
Sometimes I think it is a really hard thing to do but it is a vital thing to do. If you don’t look after yourself you are absolutely no help to anyone else.
Even though my journey of ‘restoration’ hasn’t been an easy one, with a few crashes alone the way, it has been a rewarding one. I feel I am now able to accomplish the things I was made to do. Which is a total turn around in a year and a half.
Beautifully put.