Читать книгу Driven - James Martin - Страница 8

Flying isn’t really my thing. I’m not a big fan. I see it just as a necessity, as a way to get from A to Z without trekking all the way round the rest of the alphabet. Sometimes, flying is essential, but don’t ask me to like it. I’d rather drive. Now there’s a surprise.

I’m sure many factors have influenced my dislike (or should I say mistrust) of aviation, but the one that springs immediately to mind is my very first flight. It was not a pleasant experience. To be honest, it was heartbreaking and more than a little embarrassing.

The whole family had come to watch. It was a pretty big occasion on account of the fact that I’d made quite a big deal of it, told everyone they had to be there to witness the event. So there they all were, the entire family, gathered round to show their support and see a very young me take to the skies on his maiden voyage. Instead they got to witness the horror of my plane dropping from the sky like a stone just seconds after take-off, hurtling towards the ground, and crashing into a million little pieces – well, two big ones.

I’d spent about two months and all my pocket money building that bloody thing. It was a big two-channel remote control glider, the kind you launched with a piece of elastic on a hook. The idea was that you attached the little hook underneath to the piece of elastic which you’d wind up and then release, launching the glider into the air. You’d then fly it around working the rudder and ailerons with the remote control. At least that was the idea. Didn’t really work out that way on my first flight.

The family were assembled in the farmyard round the back of our house to see the big launch. My dad was winding the elastic and I was on the controller ready to steer it around the skies of North Yorkshire as soon as it was airborne. My dad was winding like a madman, checking with me all the time.

‘Ready? Ready?’ He wound some more. ‘Ready?’

‘Yep, ready!’

And with that it was off. My mum was squealing, ‘He’s built it, it’s flying, look everyone, it’s flying!’ like it was the Wright Brothers’ first flight or something, my dad was fit to collapse after all the winding, I was on the controller and, BANG!, it was on the ground in two very broken pieces. The bloody elastic hadn’t detached, so the plane went straight up and straight back down again. All those months of gluing together those bits of wood and stretching that plastic skin over the wings and shrinking it on with a hair dryer, all that for nothing. There in front of an audience of my nearest and dearest I had to go and pick it up and carry it back to the shed.

The humiliation.

However, never let it be said that I’m not determined. Not to be defeated, I went straight out and bought a bigger, better one, white with an engine included this time. Exactly the same thing happened. I spent months and months and all my pocket money on building the thing, took it out back to the hard standing we had where we used to put all the lorries and tractors, started it up, and it took off and just nose-dived straight back down again. After that it was years before I mustered up the courage or enthusiasm to have another go. To be honest, it’s only now that I’m just about starting to get the hang of it. I try because I hate giving up, but deep down I know flying really isn’t my thing.

Remote control cars, on the other hand, are fantastic. As well as the usual – Star Wars figures, Lego – I’ve always had toy cars. One of my earliest memories of tricking out a vehicle of any kind involves a toy car my granddad gave me one Christmas. It was a Ford Capri. Only I wanted a cabriolet, so on Boxing Day I went into my dad’s shed and tried to take the roof off with a Stanley knife. I did it eventually as well, but not before I nearly took my thumb off with a careless slip of the knife.

At first I’d gone at it with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. I managed to crack the plastic glass of the back windscreen with the screwdriver and then bent the roof back with the pliers, but to get the roof off was going to require something a little more lethal. So I got out the Stanley knife and started sawing away at the uprights on the back. I was sawing away, sawing away, sawing away and I sawed straight through the metal and into my thumb. When I went running into the house shouting ‘Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep!’ and holding up my spouting hand to show my mum, my thumb was literally hanging off. It took seven stitches to put it back on. I can’t remember what I told my mum I’d been doing. I don’t think she cared: she was too busy worrying about the fact that my thumb was hanging off and my blood was going everywhere. My dad knew what I’d been doing though. He didn’t say anything, but he knew. My dad’s of the opinion that most parents can be too protective of kids. Instead of trying to stop me from doing dangerous things, my dad would say, ‘He’s going to hurt himself in a minute, watch this.’ When I did, he’d turn round and say, ‘Told you.’ He always claimed it was the best way to learn, and, painful though the lessons were, he was usually right.

Remote control cars were the ultimate toy. I used to have remote control buggies and me and my mates would build race tracks and jumps for them and we’d drive them all over the farm. They were proper little all-terrain things and they could really go. They were toys, but they were quick little things. I never had Scalextric though. That was always too expensive. But it was okay because I used to save up and buy these remote control cars, a cross between a beach buggy and a stock car. They came in a kit that you’d build, and which I then used to modify – no surprise there. Like a junior remote control Pimp My Ride I’d sticker them up and paint the wheels and the rims, always trying to make them better. My mates never really used to bother tricking theirs out, so they were never quite as good as mine. Well, I didn’t think so. My modifications didn’t usually make them go any quicker, but they looked cooler.

The important thing, though – and this has really stuck with me – is that I always used to look after them well. Whereas most kids would use them and trash them, I would use them then maintain them and keep them in mint condition. Even now I can’t stand it if something happens to one of my cars. If I kerb a wheel, that’s it, it has to go straight off to have the wheels sorted out. These dings you get when some idiot in a Volvo opens his door on to yours; the little chips you get when gravel kicks up and nicks the paintwork – I can’t stand to look at them. The second I spot something like that, that’s it, it’s got to be a respray straight away. I don’t care how much it costs, I can’t look at it. It’s the one thing that really, really bugs me, and I was the same way about my cars even when they came with batteries and a little crystal radio control unit.

The other thing that’s stuck with me since the days when I used to zoom my little tricked-out buggy around the hard standing out the back of our house is the ambition one day to have a proper track to race them on. When I was a kid, I used to dream of having a garden of my own. I decided that when I had my own house I was going to build a race track for my remote control cars, a proper track with little humps and jumps and everything. It was going to be ace. It never happened of course. You get older, you grow up, you pack away your childhood toys and your dreams change. Now I want a proper full-size track in my back garden. A proper tarmacked go-kart track to go all the way round the house and my back garden, for me and my mates to drive proper full-size go-karts around. I don’t think the neighbours would be too happy, but it would be bloody cool.