R and I went to Broadway at lunchtime, in search of a gift. Cake may also have been eaten, but I think it’s best that I don’t incriminate myself on that point.
As we crossed back over the High Street towards the car, a vintage bus drove past us, causing me to dredge my memory files and unearth from the fluff and old chocolate wrappers in one of the bottom corners the fact that there’s a vintage rally taking place across several local sites this weekend, entitled Wartime in the Cotswolds. This is the kind of thing that brings out photographers in droves, and I’m sure the next few BGCC competitions will be stuffed with images taken over these two (damp) days, but events that play on the British love of revisiting our past glories tend to set my nerves jangling, and I’d long since decided to give it a miss.
However, squinting down the road I could see through the mizzle that there were a couple of old cars parked on The Green, and with a few minutes of parking time left in hand we strolled down to take a look at them. A pair of Austin Sixes, I have to say that they looked absolutely splendid in this setting – as did this very dapper gentleman, who was gazing at them with what we took to be a proprietorial air.
Shortly after I took this shot he crossed the road to where we were standing, and I made a comment to him about the amount of work I assume is involved in keeping cars like these on the road. “Grease,” he said. “You have to keep everything well greased.” Then a penny seemed to drop: “They’re nothing to do with me,” he said. “I used to have an A55 – drove it most days – but these days I’m all about vintage cycles. I’m waiting for the bus to come back, to take me down to Toddington where I’m going to be on show.”
I was somewhat tempted to follow him down to Toddington – the main station of the Gloucestershire and Worcestershire Railway – to see him with his vintage cycle; and if the shots I’d taken in Broadway hadn’t pleased my eye I might well have taken a deep breath and gone. But as it turned out I rather like this photo – and R very much likes this one – so in the event I had my blip, and didn’t feel that I needed to cause my nerves any further jangling.
