CRAWLEY CLASSIC AND AMERICAN CAR SHOW MONDAY 26th MAY 2003

What a great day and a great turnout. A record number for the South East region of 13 cars. The sun shone for most of the day and no rain. What a bonus that was considering the amount we have had lately, but Alan did say he had ordered good weather and he was right. Most of us met up at Pease Pottage services. It seemed like a meet straight away and that was before we got to Crawley. Off we went and we lost half of the convoy about 5 minutes after leaving Pease Pottage. I was told this was because Tom Kingsnorth kept stalling the car. Was that true Dad?
When we arrived at Crawley, we set out our stand and must have had half the field, maybe that's a slight exaggeration but it was organised by the same people that arrange Billing so they were looking for great things, enough room for 50 cars.
Dave Leyland couldn't wait to get started on my car. He brought along another windscreen wiper switch for my SC as the intermittent wipe wasn't working.
After this he was going around asking people if they had any problems that he could solve. He really did seem to be in his element. I'm sure we will find some more things for him to fix at our next meetings.
Dave Leyland has now agreed to become our South East Area Technical Adviser and I'm sure you will all join me in welcoming Dave into the fold.
Alan, Linda and Mark Cayzer made some lame excuse about having to leave early. The problem was the gates to the field were locked so we all decided that Alan would have to do some rally driving to cross the field, fly through a few bushes and avoid the trees. They got out of the field OK in the end.
Pete Mason kept asking everyone if they thought his rear wheel was straight after the slight accident he had at the Ravenswood meet. AVOID ROUNDABOUTS PETE!
He and Dave Leyland had been working really hard to get their cars ready for the show. What with wheels and water pumps to name but a few mechanical things they had to sort out.
Tony Whitfield decided to come to the meet on slicks. It was pointed out to him that one of his tyres was smooth, well half of it anyway so he decided to give us a lesson on how to change a wheel with the jack slowly sinking into the nice soft grass. Wow! How did he do it?
The event organisers sent around some Judges asking if we had any cars that were good enough to be judged. We thought about it for a second and decided that Tom Kingsnorth and David Price were the best we had, so the judges came around and went over both cars twice. Tom asked them what they thought the chances were for winning. They told us that the cars were both in the top ten but we would have to wait and see. There was also a category for best turned out club, which we thought we might be in with a shout for. We did have more cars on our stand than anyone else after all and many fine examples.
Finally, it was time for judging so I looked around for my dad (Tom). Where is he? He must have sneaked off to the luxurious loos, we thought. So we head over to the judging tent and Tom was already there at the front, strangely disguised with dark rap-around sunglasses. Does he think he has won, I wondered? Perhaps he did not want to be recognised?
Curiously, as the trophies were being handed out he seemed to slowly move back into the crowd.
The 1980s category finally came up and we still hoped that either Tom or Dave had won, but unfortunately the prize was awarded to a superb Mercedes convertible. We still had hopes for the best club stand though which was voted for by the public but this time we were just beaten by the Ford Capri club stand.
Hopefully next year we will get something for our great turnout. This was the first year we have been there so we did very well. I am sure everyone went away happy knowing that we had all put a lot of effort into it and at last the South East region seems to be taking off. Keep it going!

Attendees for the Club were:-
Alan Cayzer
Dave Price
Steve Kingsnorth
Dave Leyland
Ken Piner
Tom Kingsnorth
Chris Falcke
Gareth Orchard
Richard Sargent
Peter Mason
John Kempshall
Tony Whitfield
Bob Manekshaw