Meeting Michael (oh, and Damon)

Ξ July 3rd, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ |

This tale starts in a wine-bar.  It stands on the edge of the square in the village of Northleach (sorry – Town).  It was in the summer, somewhere – the time in question – about 6.00 pm.  The air was warm, the day was fine and the sun was just setting; casting a reddish-warmth onto the buildings opposite and turning them into McVities Digestives – yum.  Yes, it was a very nice day indeed. My drinking-buddy was a guy called Steve.  He was no stranger – in that at the time he lived just two doors away from me at the top of the town.  However, as is often the case these days; we hardly knew each other really and had previously only exchanged grunts of recognition in the street.  Thus, finding ourselves captive in one another’s company, the need for some tongue-loosener – Burgundy Style!

We small-talked, as you do, and found we had a common interest and passion in F1 motor-racing.  We chatted about this subject for quite a while in fact.  Then, suddenly, in mid slurp, Steve just happened to announce, as if in passing, that he was ‘having to go’ to Monaco soon; ‘to attend the FIA prize giving’.  I nearly choked!  What could I say, except: you ‘lucky bastard’!

I’d always wanted to go to something like this; an invitation-only, once in a lifetime opportunity to see life on ‘the other side’ of the F1 fence!  I eagerly babbled this to Steve – as best I could, as the wine was starting to render my tongue inoperable, and I hadn’t taken the time to concentrate on what I was going to babble – before it just spouted.  He turned, concentrated on his words (an experienced drinker: but I noticed), and said … ‘Why, you wanna go?’  He said he’d see if he could get me an invitation – ‘yeah, right’ I thought … one in a long list where people say they’ll do something, but forget about it the next day (ring any bells?)

Amazingly, about a week later, a rather flash, handmade envelope popped through my letter box: ‘The FIA has pleasure in inviting Dr. Peet …’ the rest was lost on me – I fainted!

Well, that was how it started, with Steve getting me an invitation to the dinner.  I won’t go in to how Steve managed it (I don’t know really), or what he does for a living (I don’t know really).  Nor will I tell you about how I have the invite AND the signed menu from the event framed after the fact – but it hangs today in pride of place in my house.  No, none of that – I’ll just tell you about how we got there (and nearly didn’t) – it’s far more interesting.  As an epilogue, I’ll tell you about who I met there and about propping up the bar with Michael!

To the Airport:

Steve was clerk-of-coursing at Donnington Park the day after the event and so he had ‘made arrangements’: weird arrangements they might have been – but at least I hadn’t had to make them!

To get Steve’s timing right, we were to fly out with EasyJet from Luton and return, the next day, into Heathrow, with BA.  Now, this took some juggling.  Firstly, Steve was in his car – and wanted to still be in it when we got back!  To that end, he’d decided that it ought to be stored at Heathrow!  So, we dropped it in the Long Stay, took the bus to the terminal and then got a hire car (via another courtesy bus), for the drive up the M1 to Luton airport.

So far so good (except that we’d already been in two buses and two cars).

We got to a foggy Luton – and had to drop the car off of course.  Not at the airport mind, but at a hotel.  Luton Airport’s small and not very sophisticated (you’ll hear of another example of this soon)!  A courtesy bus (!) took us to the terminal where we met the rest of the people we were to be traveling with – ten in all!

We checked our bags and DJs and took to the bar.  The talk was entirely about cars and going really fast into bends that should only be taken at about 30 mph, or so it seemed!  It turned out that one of our company was to receive a trophy at the prize-giving for doing just this type of thing.  He was the Historic F1 World Champion for 1996!

Anyway, time dragged on, beers were consumed and more stories were told along the same lines – I wondered whether the beer emphasised the speeds involved, but I doubted it – these were serious go-fasters I was mixing with!  All of this continued quite happily until, some sober soul brightly said ‘shouldn’t we be boarding about now?’  After we’d all consulted our watches (in unison, flashmob style), we all slurred our agreement.  Now, it was at this stage that each of us took on that, ‘scared rabbit in the headlamps’ look – half-cut or not, it occurred to us all that something was obviously not quite right!

EasyJet informed us – after some prompting – that our plane was still in somewhere like Sweden (it gets a bit hazy as we were all a little oiled by this time).  If I remember correctly, this was ‘due to electronics’ – or rather, the lack of them!  Luton doesn’t have a ‘CAT 1 ILS’ it turned out (I’ve a pilot’s license, thus the correctness of the acronyms there).  This means that if the pilot can’t actually see the ground (that they are hurtling toward), they can’t land, i.e., Fog = no lando the plane!  Yes, I know it sounds ‘sane’ but at the time it seemed, well, daft.  ‘Just tell him to take a stab at it’ we suggested!  But to no avail.

What to do?  Two options really: we could wait – after all, the plane might arrive (eventually) – or we could panic.  We chose to panic.

To the Other Airport:

The ‘Champs’ mechanic’s wife (or some such other incestuous relationship along the same lines) happened to know the Chairman of a major airline – so an urgent call was made.  Could we get a flight into Nice from Heathrow – if we could get there (for some of us – ‘back there’ of course).

‘Yes’ came the reply (they actually ‘bumped’ 10 people) – now it was time to really panic!  After we all stopped shouting at each other – and any passer-by that happened to get too close to us – we decided, before we could go anywhere, we needed to retrieve our bags and DJs.

Now, have you ever tried to get your bags back, once they’ve been ‘checked in’?  Well, let me tell you – it’s hard – esp. if you’re three-parts-pissed (the passing of time allowed us to upgrade from half-cut to three-parts-pissed of course)!  For one thing, security get very suspicious of people trying to do this kind of thing – ‘why do you want them back?’ and that kind of thing: as if to suggest that, through lack of balls, we’d now obviously decided against smuggling those drugs we’d got stashed in our bags!

Much arm-waving, pleading, shouting, time taking, and then sweet-talking later, we eventually got our bags back.  Now, how to get to Heathrow?  Obvious – back to the bus, the hotel, the hire car, and the M1 – all at about 5.00 pm!

For those readers who are not familiar with the M1, it was our first ever motorway.  Therefore, it was designed to take about 10 cars an hour, in both directions, and at peak times.  Enter the modern day: gridlock, road-rage … you name it, except going from A to B in any reasonable time! Still, what else was there to do – after all, this was a once in a lifetime thing.  We’d do whatever it takes we decided!

Now, I knew Steve was a pretty good driver – he had some of those gloves that showed his knuckles through the back for starters.  However, I didn’t know that anyone could do 70 mph in crawling traffic – until I met Steve!  More: he could do it and swear at the same time – mightily impressive!

The trip back to Heathrow was one of those journeys that you’d really like to shut your eyes for, but can’t.  After all, I’d just seen the vista on the M1 and it didn’t look much different running at it backwards!  I really wanted to close my eyes, but I just couldn’t do it; for one thing, I wanted to be able to see whatever it was we were going to hit!  I figured that, if I could see it, I could perhaps duck or brace myself when the appropriate moment came – as it surely would!

We must have looked like we belonged to CI5 or some other such agency – too secret to have a siren or flashing lights – but certainly some kind of ‘don’t fuck with us’ types!

Our party, of course, couldn’t all fit in one car – so the others followed in another three cars that simply followed along in the wake we created at the front.  Apparently the last car took to pretending that THEY were the CI5 agents chasing the criminals in the cars in front!

To the Plane:

Eventually we screamed into Heathrow!

We dumped (the term is correct) the cars in the Short Stay and then simply legged it.  I’ve never been so exhausted in my life before – the burning in my legs the ‘I can’t go on’ feeling being subdued by the ‘oh yes you fucking will’ bodily reaction that must surely be familiar to every Olympic middle-distance runner the world over.  However, for a couch potato like me; well, my body must have thought that it’d got a hot poker up its arse or something – certainly, the rest of it was trying really hard to leave its arse behind for some reason!  Goodness knows what my arse thought about any of this.

Through passport control – ‘here, here, please, pleazzzze, yes, it’s me – and yes, I know my student’s hairdo makes me look like a twat but it really is me!’

And, so on to the plane:

Fuck – wrong one!

Yes, as hard as it is to believe, we were on the wrong plane.  It’s amazing how ten rampaging, sweaty people with ‘get outta the fucking way’ looks on their faces can convince others to do stuff that they normally wouldn’t – like let us on to a plane going to a place that we didn’t want to go to!  At least it explained why our seats contained someone else’s arses!

Um, to the Other Plane:

Off the plane, back through the terminal, even more running …

Another plane.  This time the right one!

Relief: short lived relief: now we could ask … ‘what time will we arrive’?

To the Hotel:

We arrived, on-time (for this flight) at Nice airport.

Luckily Steve could speak French – fluently by the sound of it too – I distinctly heard him say ‘Merde’ – surely, advanced stuff!  We found the taxi-rank outside and left Steve to ‘do his thing’: of course, we all looked liked we were following the conversation, but were not terribly interested in it (terribly British).  Later, we found out that it was obvious that we didn’t speak French – else we’d have all run off!

It turned out that Steve had asked a cab driver (who was at least eighty years old) if he could get us to Monaco, the Automobile Club and the dinner on-time!  The driver had simply asked if there’d be ‘a present’ in it for him if he could (Steve’s translation).  Steve had replied for all of us, ‘Oh Que Oui’!

As it turns out, this trip was even more frightening than the trip down the M1 – at least then I knew what the swearing had meant then!

We set off at (and I’m sorry here but it was all in KPH and not MPH so I’ll have to use rough approximations only …) – REALLY FUCKING FAST kph and we maintained this speed right through the centre of Nice!

Nice is interesting – it’s as though, to exit Nice, you have to circle it at an ever-increasing speed; until you reach escape-velocity.  At which point you fly off at a tangent and might, just might, end up on the right road!  It seemed more by luck than judgment – but when escape velocity was reached and the wheels finally lost all their grip, we ended up on the right road!

As with the trip down to Luton, we were meant to have been in convoy – however, we’d lost the others – they having reached escape-velocity on the previous roundabout!  No matter, their driver was even older than ours and it seemed to us, through observation and our current empirical study, that a driver’s speed-capability was inversely proportional to their age – ‘lucky us’ we thought, and vowed that if we survived, to attend their mass funeral later in the week.

Our driver had four in the back of his Mercedes Limo (why do they all drive cars that, at home, would make you the envy of the street?).  I was sat nearest the door.  I think the others had quickly learned, from the trip down to Luton, that the centre seats were the safest!  I was too slow/pissed – or whatever – to have fathomed this out and was sat right next to where the side-impact bars were probably placed (this was a Mercedes’ Limo!)  I would therefore have a great view of any accident we might happen to have along the way – if it was a side-impact!  However, those with the good views (like airplane pilots) are necessarily the same people that are nearest to the accident of course!

In the middle of our back row was ‘the Champ’ – and I distinctly remember him saying ‘I’d give him a drive’ more than a few times during the trip – his voice going up an octave each time he repeated it.

They drive steadily in France.  For example, our driver stuck to a nice and steady 240 kph on the motorway, out of Nice, towards the turn-off to Monaco.

His overtaking tactic was interesting, he’d approach other cars at this steady speed with his headlights on high-beam.  And only, only mind, at the very last second would he … keep going just as fast!  The people in the ‘fast lane’ – let’s give it it’s proper French name – had obviously seen these mental-cases in their Mercs before: maybe they thought they were Mafia drivers on a day off or something (Italy is very close!).  Anyway, just at the point of impact; and with still no sign of our driver slowing AT ALL, they sedately moved over, and we missed them by the width of a few undercoats of paint!  I was shitting bricks!

We eventually, with a joint sigh of relief, turned off the motorway at the Monaco exit and on to some slower roads.

Now, let me just really set the scene here – these are the kinds of roads that caused Princess Grace to lose her life – they’re windy and dangerous, especially at night!  Did that slow us down one smidge?  At all?  Absolutely not!  I, and the others judging by the smell, were all out of bricks by this time; so we turned to prayer!

Somehow, we made it into the city-centre and it was here that our driver modified his behaviour – in Monaco, he decided to go straight through red lights!  Now, this in itself wouldn’t have been too bad if he’d have made some kind of ‘gesture’ – to at least see if it was ok for him to run the lights; you know, a very slight lifting of the foot planted on the go-faster pedal.  Of course, he didn’t; he stared straight ahead like some kind of madman, and just ran every light!  ‘I’d really give him a drive’ was now being bleated out by one and all!

Now, Steve must have told the driver something about why we were going before we started off I think.  I suspect this for two reasons: 1 – Steve had been dumb-struck during the journey (although I think I could hear him muttering the Lord’s Prayer under his breath for most of the journey) so he couldn’t have mentioned it on the way!  2 – the driver now took us on a qualifying lap of the Monaco circuit!

A (with hindsight) great thing about Monaco is that, for a street circuit, it’s laid out so that you don’t have to go up any one-way streets, the wrong way, if you want to drive around it on a normal day.  Not that that would have deterred our driver I’m sure!  We really did do a complete circuit and, even though time was short, we decided not to distract him from doing so: you know, you just don’t shout in someone’s ear when they’re doing a ton and running red lights – around busy streets and at night!  Best to shut-up and just hang on tight!

Having done a lap our driver once again did the escape-velocity trick he’d obviously mastered in Nice and we whizzed around again!  However, this time, when the tyres lost it, we shot up a side-street.

After a bit of weaving around pedestrians (he obviously fancied himself as a rally driver too) he pulled up very smartly in front of our hotel.  For the front passengers, this meant they ended up with their faces pressed up against the windscreen – Mercs have good brakes!

To the Dinner:

We fell out of the car (kissing the pavement) …

Steve – more French … ‘Yes, he’ll wait’ (it was a good job that we didn’t have to vote on this!) – ‘to the rooms’, ‘see you back down here’!
I’ve already made it clear that we did things pretty quickly on this trip, but it is here where I earned my black-belt in DJ wrestling!  I was done up like a penguin in about two minutes flat!  Steve and the others were just a few seconds slower; as I was just in front of them in reaching the reception – na na na naaaa na – front seat Peet!

Back in the cabs – for the others had turned up just after we had apparently (but their driver hadn’t done a lap!) – to drive to the Monaco Automobile Club.

The driveway in to the Automobile Club De Monaco, to give it its proper name, was beautiful – tree lined, with curves in all the proper places.  We screeched up in front of it and thankfully rewarded our driver (although I half felt like nutting him!).  I never did find out what we actually paid him – but I think it was a lot (the excitement of the ‘Oh how I am glad to be alive’ feeling making itself known in terms of paper money no doubt!)?

We jumped out of the car (not sure whether this was due to thrill or fear) and were greeted by a rush of photographers!  It was but a short-lived moment of self-importance as it was rapidly replaced with one of inadequacy.  Being ‘nobodies’, they all pissed off to their hiding places in the bushes!

Well, we didn’t mind – we were there; and what’s more, and against all the odds, each of us was in one piece!

We showed our invitations at the door and were shown to our table – the only empty one in the whole place.  However, it had one other distinction – we had a ‘Champ’ on ours’ and that meant that it was in with the stars.

I hadn’t noticed straight away as I’d been busy taking in the whole room and trying to lower my heartbeat.  It was a ballroom done by Monaco folk with F1 money.  I’ll let you conjure up your own picture of this – hint: think grand, very grand, and very flashy.  Anyway, behind me sat Sir Frank Williams, to my left Michael Schumacher etc.  Awesome – petrol-head heaven really.

Dinner and wine arrived – the best food, the best wine – like we’re talking several thousand pounds per Methuselah (8 normal bottles).  We spent several hours chatting, drinking, eating and generally taking in the whole occasion.  Then the dancing started!  Luckily, I was taught to dance properly when I was very young and so had some fabulous partners (imagine!).  Thanks Mum – you always said it’d come in useful one day!

After dinner came the prize giving itself (well done Damon!!!) – a, not surprisingly, grand and noisy affair with lights, smoke, cars dropping from the ceiling, and excerpts displayed on huge screens.  All great stuff!

After the prizes were given out, the more formal part of the evening seemed to end – well anyway, Mika left at this stage with a blonde-beauty on each arm, and, let’s face it, the evening would have seemed over for you too – if you’d have had the same opportunity!

To the Bar:

It was now time to really mix.  I’m sure it’ll be boring listing all the famous people I met; it reads like a Who’s Who of F1.  Suffice to say, it was both a daunting and very interesting experience.

There was another little story I could add here – how Princess Stephanie’s body guard and me met – but I’ll save that for another time perhaps.

At the end I finished up at the bar with Michael Schumacher – him sipping mineral water, me drinking even more wine.  We chatted about computers (!), about cars, about what it was like to drive them (computers and cars!) … we did this until we were basically chucked out of the place.

I must say that I have never met anyone so amazing looking as Michael Schumacher before.  He literally glowed – fitness and health oozing out of every pore, every gesture, every word.  He’s also an extremely nice guy – charming, interested, interesting – not at all arrogant in the slightest (as some would have you believe).

Eventually, Michael went on his way home – in fact, I think he got beamed up as he simply disappeared once we were all outside!  Oh well – I always thought he was an alien!

To the Hotel (again):

We were conveyed back to the hotel by one of a fleet of the club’s personalised people-carriers – each driven by a female glamour model.  No, I’m not joking!

Once back there, and despite several attempts to entice our driver in for a drink, she left and we were alone – seemingly, with just our memories.  However, it was short lived.  As we entered our hotel – guess what – the place was filled with many of the people we’d just left up the road!  But the best was that, resplendent in his kilt, Colin (Steele [balls]) McRae [RIP] was staying there too – and, being a Scot, he was just getting started on a good night out!

We actually went to bed about an hour before it was time to get up and return to Nice airport.

The trip back was as uneventful as the outward trip wasn’t!  But we were pleased by that.

Well, that’s it then – what an adventure!