The recent blizzard and subsequent icy road conditions (albeit short-lived) sure caused chaos on the roads a few weeks ago. What I would like to know is, how much notice do the county highway departments in the areas affected need in order to salt and grit the roads sufficiently? We were all being told for a least a week by the Meteorological office (weatherman!) that snow and blizzards conditions would be on the way but apparently that isn’t enough! I despair sometimes!

It also seemed to have caught a lot of drivers out too. A friend of mine whose car was sideswiped by a lorry at a roundabout last week was told by the two garages who gave her estimates, that the earliest they could book her car in for repairs was the second week of March! Apparently their body shops are currently overflowing with cars that had been damaged in snow and ice related accidents.

Sadly lots of conversations in and around my children’s school the few days after the snow, centred around the ladies professing how terrified they were of taking the car out in conditions of this sort. How they wouldn’t know what to do when in a skid or if the wheels started to slip etc etc.

This is where motorsport disciplines like the Autotests and PCTs come into their own. Forget the competitive element for the moment ladies (yes I am addressing you—the wives, girlfriends and daughters of the male club members), these events are fantastic for learning car control in slippery conditions but in a controlled non-damaging environment.

After reading the thread on the club’s chat forum about B19’s PCT on February 8th, where some of the chaps have been actively trying to encourage their other halves to have a go, however I got the feeling the ladies were a bit reluctant. If you feel like that, is it because you think you can’t do it as well as the blokes? Do you feel you might get embarrassed if you don’t score well as you have never done anything like that? Well we all have to start somewhere. Are you afraid the guys might take the mickey? Unfortunately I have to say yes some do on that one, but as I showed at the last event B19 ran in November, us ladies can and frequently do make these men eat their words! I beat Ralph remember, on my first event of this type (hey, we're now even, 1event each after the B19 PCT - web editor).

I know it is too late for the B19 PCT this time, but there will be others and of course our own Autotest series in May is an excellent place to start.

So come on ladies, join our select band and show the guys we are made of more than sugar and spice….etc!

As I climb off my soap box, I would like to say a big thanks and congratulations to Viv and Andy Elcomb for organising the Club Awards dinner at the Hadlow Manor Hotel. It was a great night out, food and company were excellent (mmmm……..those profiteroles…) and it was especially nice for Ralph and I to come away with armfuls of pots. My kids needed their sunglasses on Sunday morning to shade their eyes from the gleaming silver on top of the telly!

There is a montage of photos of the award winners further inside this month’s Acorn.

With the launching of the 2004 Sevenoaks Speed league sponsored by the Marketing Machine and Verdant, there are lots of opportunities coming up for all registered contenders to get their marshalling qualification sorted early. Adverts are dotted through the magazine this month for our forthcoming Road rally, the co-pro Rally of Kent, the Sunseeker and of course the Lydden sprint. Please make the effort to appear at one or more to marshal. Let’s make Chris Scudder a very happy man.

The recent January social was a quiz night organised and MC’d by question master extraordinaire John Milligan. John worked hard to challenge those that attended (unfortunately illness on my part meant we had to give our apologies) and a good time was had. I believe there wasn’t too much cheating going on and John didn’t have to award any 10 sec penalties. The results have yet to be confirmed pending an enquiry by the Clerk of the Course!

Chin organised the January 12car on behalf of 7Oaks and another full entry was fielded. Chin sneakily gave us expert navigation this time and immediately Ralph went looking for deeper meanings within the navigation than were there. About half way through we realised that Expert means that the timings are much quicker as you are expected to plot much more on the go. By TC3 we were bumping along the bottom and struggled to keep from being OTL! We made it however and did enjoy the challenging roads and floody puddles (the car was disgusting when we got home) however we didn’t enjoy the mad men dancing about in the middle of the road which gave us a bit of a scary moment. Once again thanks also go to the marshals, without whom etc...