Diarrhoea is hereditary, it runs in the genes …….. was written in chalk on a board outside a pub in Brentford. There were some other observations but it’s probably just as well that I can’t fully recall them. Nice pub I thought, must go in there sometime! I’d been up that way visiting Think Automotive, an extremely helpful outfit that will make up braided hoses for you while you wait. Before you ask, the hoses were required to connect up a hydraulic handbrake in the Chevette, replace the two rubber hoses feeding the rear callipers and supply oil to a Mocal cooler. Ordinarily the car doesn’t need an oil cooler but a couple of years ago I did the Haynes Spring Classic Tour which included half a dozen laps of Castle Combe. After about four the temp gauge was showing 120°C. With this year’s trip with Ian and Keith Crocker to the Nurburgring coming up, I considered that adding the oil cooler was an essential mod. Regular forum readers will know that I’ve been doing a few things to the car in preparation for this season, some of which will have been completed by the time of the Lydden sprint. Some bigger front brakes are on their way to me, also an electric power steering column and I’ve also been re-engineering the forward links on the axle slightly, replacing rose joints with rubber bushes ….. seems like a backward step but time will tell. I haven’t worked on the car for ages now, what joy it is to remind oneself of the pain available when one’s spanner slips!

The Lydden sprint is the first event in our Sevenoaks Speed League and at the time of writing places were still available. We, that is, the committee always knew that this one was going to be hard to fill. Maximum entry is 110 competitors and even if we achieve that maximum, we have calculated that we will make a loss of about £200. So although the entry fee is / was high, it was at its absolute lowest. We can’t really compete with the SEMSEC events as they have the benefit of a race meeting subsidising the sprint entry which we don’t do. This year there are about 7 sprint meetings at Lydden, there were 9 but two SEMSEC rounds have been dropped. This gives competitors more choice at which Lydden events they do and cost is obviously a factor. With the circuit hire increasing yearly, it may become untenable for us to continue with a sprint there which would be a shame but we know when to call it a day. There are lots of regular Sevenoaks competitors who aren’t on the entry list so I’m guessing that we’re gonna be overrun with marshals looking to score an early 7 points.

Forum readers will have seen a few weeks ago a topic on Val des Terres, a hillclimb on Guernsey. One of our members, John Kemp competes there on occasions in an Imp and has friends on the island. John mentioned to me some time ago that Sevenoaks members would be welcomed by the organisers in an event and that John would be happy to look into the costing of making such a trip. The basic idea is that you get your car or car/trailer to Portsmouth during the week, it goes out on a ferry and gets taken off at the other end by John’s friends who will store it until you fly out for the actual event. You do the event, fly back and collect your car from Portsmouth again when it arrives back from the island. This is apparently the cheapest way of doing it but I dare say if you didn’t want to part with your vehicle then you could travel out on the ferry with it. At the moment, John is still looking into details so this is really just here to see if there are those amongst you that would be up for such a trip. When I brought this up on the web, two expressed an interest, Sam Collins and Daniel Whittington, but on the basis of going out the day before, competing and coming back the day after. We don’t have to do this in a group, if you want a week’s break on your own but have the opportunity to take in the hillclimb whilst there, then that can be accommodated. If anyone is serious about this, drop me an email and I’ll pass details onto John.

The scatters and 12cars have now finished for this 2003/04 season and the last two scatters have been much better supported than the earlier ones with 10 and 8 crews out on them. The ‘Weald’ event format does work as has been shown with the 12cars and both ourselves and Maidstone agree that it is more worthwhile to run fewer but better supported events than each of us doing 6 events and only getting 4 crews out. All of the organisers of scatter rallies enjoy doing the bit beforehand, collecting clues and devising a bit of cryptic navigation but it does take up quite a few hours of their time and is then disheartening when only a small number turn out. Let’s hope that the tail end of this season indicates how things will start when we return with them in October. On the March 26^th scatter, I was partnered by Rob Sartain as Daren Hall was on duty the following day and that required an early start. We did better than we had expected, the clues were well spread out in three main clumps and straight away we decided that we wouldn’t go for the most Northern batch. The navigation instructions were a good mix of accurate map refs and some more 12car type nav, herringbones, spot heights, gridlines, arrive and depart junctions and so on. We spent 30 minutes plotting and got all but two that baffled us. We then made our way round reasonably quickly, spent perhaps slightly longer than we should have finding some answers and got back to the pub at 10.23. There was no way that we could have got even one more answer in those 7 spare minutes. When the results were read out in reverse order it got to, third is ……. not us, blimey, second or first then. Second is …… us on 160 points with Frank Collins and Andy Ayling of Croydon winning with 175. It made us think that if we had been able to plot those two extra points, that they might have been within reach in the remaining time, but then life is full of “if onlys”. Also out for Sevenoaks was Chin on his own ….. does no-one want to play with him!? and Olly Gausden and Andy Malone, both keen new members who finished one better than their previous result of 4^th by coming in 3^rd on 155 points, just half a mark shy of our 2^nd place, bit too close for comfort that. Well done guys.

The Rally of Kent went off very well last month despite the weather doing its best to dampen things down a bit. I washed the Puma off in the road the day after and left a slick of mud running down the gutter, don’t want that on the drive. Daren Hall can bear testament to the fact that a good proportion of the Welsh forests now reside in West Kingsdown after last year’s BTRDA campaign! 62 starters and 41 finishers with the overall prize taken by car 1, last year’s winners, Will Nicholls and Nick Broom in the WRC Impreza. Sevenoaks were represented by two full crews and 3 half crews and all made it to the finish. Stefan Davis / John Bond came in 4^th in a large class 3 and set the fastest time of the 7oaks contingent and Phil Spratt / Steve Coles came 2^nd in class 1. As the Hemsted stages ran as the last two of the day, none of us had the time or inclination to make it back to Detling to see anyone, we were still clearing up well into darkness. Only the intrepid Chris Scudder got back there as he had no choice but to return all the stage furniture, well done Chris ….. again.

On the marshalling front, as you well know, Chris Scudder is our Chief Marshal and last year he added to his abilities by securing a Speed Nat B Clerk of the Course licence. In order to be able to give Chris the opportunity to make use of his licence, we need to find people willing to Chief Marshal the odd event, and I do mean just one event every now and then. A North Weald for instance which needs about 15 marshals minimum. It would involve some phone calls / emails / letters and then on the day being free to troubleshoot anywhere on the track and provide drinks, etc to those on post. Chris would no doubt be able to suggest the best ways of securing people and would invariably be on hand if you had a difficult decision to make. Now ….. don’t all ring at once, but it’s another way you can give a little back to the club and help with the organisational side of things, plus you’ll score your 7 bonus points if you’re a Speed League competitor, 10 points if you’re a Rally Championship competitor and you’ll also get 60 TROG points. Chris and Chin have shared the TROG trophy since 1995, about time someone else got in there. By the way Chin, what does TROG stand for?

The leaflet accompanying a recently purchased dartboard entitled 'Rules for the Game of Darts' states that ' Neither age nor sex offers obstacles to play ......'  A word of advice, don't have sex whilst playing darts unless sadomasochism is your thing, or you want piercings in places you had never even thought of!!