July 2007 - Posts

30 July 2007 11:49

Tony Greenway in August

Car shows are big in Yorkshire this month. Tony Greenway takes two for a test drive...

CARS, cars everywhere – and not just on the roads. Last month, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (the original one from the *** Van *** film) came to Nunnington Hall, so naturally we took the ankle-biters along to watch it fly/drive past. Well, it was a cheap day out.

Chitty really must be a magical automobile because usually, when my children sit in the back of our car, the big one keeps whining: ‘Are we there yet?’ and ‘I’m BORED’ while wiping chocolaty fingers down the headrest and dropping crisp crumbs in her car-seat as a form of dirty protest.

But we had none of that when she met Chitty. She just gawped in silent wonder and refused to budge from her spot despite the lengthening line of children waiting to take her place; and it was only when I shouted: ‘Lookover there! Is that the Child Catcher?’ that she shifted pretty quickly - although it did cause a bit of wild-eyed panic in the rest of the queue. (Sorry about that. But blame Robert Helpmann: blimey, he WAS scary, wasn’t he?). I hope Chitty comes back to Yorkshire soon because even I got all nostalgic about seeing it in the flesh, as it were. Then again, after we left, I was whistling Me Ol’ Bamboo for three days solid, so you have to wonder if it was really worth it.

This month, there are more car-related events in the county (but of the ‘non-flying’ variety). On August 5th, Sheffield will be hosting its first-ever city centre motor show (which, by the way, is free). The council is calling it ‘a great entertaining day out for all the family’ and promises classic cars and bikes, military vehicles, wedding cars, brand new and futuristic cars and emergency vehicles (the only time you’ll want to see one up close). Then there’s the VW Festival at Harewood House (on August 19th ) that is, says the blurb, ‘aimed at VW enthusiasts who want to show off their cars; and also for the families who want to spend a sunny Sunday wondering around the grounds.’ If my own beloved MK III VW Golf didn’t consist almost entirely of rust and dirt, I’d take it along, too. But it does, so I won’t. I will, however, keep Harewood to that ‘sunny Sunday’ promise.

I’m very interested in car design at the moment, because, for the family MPV, I've just bought (don't laugh) an old-style Fiat Multipla (I said DON'T laugh) – the one with the squashed-looking bonnet and the ‘roll of fat’ underneath the front window. The Fiat Multipla has many plus points. It's good on fuel, it's fun to drive and there's so much space inside that when you start speaking to the person in the passenger seat it’s like you’re yodelling in a canyon.

But it ain't pretty. In fact, it's hideously ugly, and resembles, from the front, a startled frog. From every other angle, it looks like the Popemobile. No-one is going to steal this thing because the Multipla is so grotesque, it acts as its own anti-theft device – and even the execs at Fiat (and they designed it) admit as much. So I am now forced to get used to people stopping, staring, pointing and laughing as I drive down the street, or asking for a papal blessing as I alight onto the curb.

But - ha! - did your car ever hang in the Museum of Modern Art in New York? No. I don't think so. But the Multipla did (albeit with a sign next it to it reading 'Man, that is one ugly car.') So who looks silly NOW, eh? Why. That would be me.

Who knows. You might even see a bullet grey froggy Multipla slap bang in the middle of the Sheffield city centre motor show. If we can’t find anywhere else to park it, that is. Just a warning.

City Centre Motor Show   Sheffield   August 5th  11am-4pm  Free

VW Festival     Harewood House, Leeds  August 19th  0113 218 1010
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30 July 2007 11:37

Tony Greenway in July

BACK in 1978, an American new wave band called Blondie appeared on Top of the Pops performing their UK breakthrough hit, Denis. Next day at school, it was all we talked about. Or rather, lead singer

Debbie Harry was all we talked about. It's hard to describe the effect that Harry had on a bunch of hormonally charged 12-year-old boys, but I think I speak for all my former schoolmates when I say: 'Phwoarrrrr.' By then, Harry was already 33, but this didn't matter to us because she was, we all agreed, the most sizzling female this side of our beleaguered French teacher andthe blonde one out of Abba (12-year-old boys think about little else - well, that and football.)

Our attraction to Harry was partly fuelled by the way she looked: blonde, just-got-out-of-bed hair, vermillion pout, blinding teeth and cheekbones so sharp you could cut yourself on them. Her image was alarmingly, rapaciously sexual and her clothes were on the brief side.

But we also liked her coolly detached attitude. She had a surly, challenging stare which invited everyone to drop dead. Even at that young age, we recognised trouble when we saw it, and trouble looked like fun. I knew if I ever brought Harry home to meet my parents (I could dream, couldn't I?) she would be exactly the sort of woman my mother would violently disapprove of, but my dad, strangely, would be okay with.

She even had a powerful effect on females. At the girls' school down the road, pupils started sporting shaggy peroxide 'dos, even if some of the results were more Dirty Harry than Debbie Harry. Meanwhile, my friends and I got on with the tough chore of collecting every bit of Harry memorabilia we could lay our hands on - posters, records, magazines and even a video called Debbie Does Dallas, which we presumed was a recording of a Blondie concert in Texas but which turned out to be something else entirely.

Nearly three decades have passed, which makes Harry - eek! - 62 years of age and me old enough to know better. Amazingly Blondie are still touring and this month play Harrogate which is not, admittedly, the first place you'd expect to find a band associated with the wild excesses of the seventies New York punk scene. Debbie is old enough to be a granny now, so the only= ones buzzing about her will be the balding sexagenarians in the stalls. And when she sings 'Oh, your hair is beautiful' - a line from Blondie's 1979 hit Atomic - expect to see most of them burst into tears.

She's still a rebel at heart, refusing to grow old gracefully (if she was, she probably wouldn't be touring the world with a raucous New Wave pop group). Some commentators have tut-tutted about this, saying she's  too old to be a rock chick and should retire with dignity. Funny that. No one ever says the same about Mick Jagger or Keith Richards. And anyway, she's still got 'it' - that same indefinable thing she had back in 1978. She still looks like trouble. Plus, her voice has stayed exactly the same. Just listen to the way she purrs 'she looks like she don't care', the intro line from Blondie's 1999 comeback hit, Maria. It's as strong and true as it was 30 years ago. So what if Debbie Harry isn't a poster girl anymore?

She's now something far more potent. She's become an icon.

 

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