Welcome to Spring. And, frankly, thank goodness! I was getting a bit bored of the cold – the garage is hard to heat effectively.

But at least I have managed to get the Elan’s headlight vacuum system replaced over the winter (without first removing the rear bumper, as was suggested by one wag who shall remain nameless). This means that, with my newly minted and shiny license, I am now ready for the run on Sunday the 4th to Gosford Classic Car Museum.

I hope to see lots of you there, and I know we will have at least five Elans, so I am looking forward to that photograph at least. Full details are in the calendar.

On which subject, please make sure to try the new feature which allows you to add events to your personal calendar – handy to prevent manual input, and also prevents you missing all the important events. Click on the event to open up the detail, and at the bottom of the calendar entry are two buttons allowing you to add your calendar entry of choice (well, that’s if you use Outlook, Notes or one of the systems that supports Googlecal – sorry, they are the only ones available at the moment).

While we are talking events, please come along to the AGM on Wednesday the 21st to make sure we say a proper farewell to Kris Bennett, who has put in 8 years of hard labour as our Treasurer, and who has decided to hand on the pen to Greg Cliffe.

As well as being a Lotus nut and a lovely chap, Greg is CA qualified, which probably makes him over qualified on several counts to be our Treasurer, but I am very grateful for his hand going up to volunteer. So come along to welcome him too. And to join me in thanking the rest of your Committee for another year of keeping the ship pointing the right way.

In other news…

Those who came to the All British Day had a thoroughly lovely day. In spite of the threat during the week, the sun shone all day so most of us got a bit pink, and picnics were in abundance. Yours truly managed to drag the Eleven out of Geoff’s workshop to show you how close it now is to completion – the final push is on. And it needs new tyres, I’d say, as the tyres on it, while perfectly treaded, are at least 20 years old!

If you haven’t registered your interest in coming to the Christmas Party, can I ask you to start thinking that far out, just so I don’t have to do the last minute scramble to make sure everyone is catered for? Drop me a line to [email protected] with a list of attendees and confirmation you have transferred funds, and I will add you to the list. Full details are in CC.

I apologise again that I have not been around the traps as much as I would like (I blame work), although I did manage to make it to Bruce Mansell’s shed this month, which was, as always, a brilliant evening. Thank you to everyone who turned out in the cold, and particular thanks of course to Bruce and Nick for hosting us so kindly and generously – the glass of red was particularly welcome at the end of a long day Bruce, so my personal thanks too!

Mike has continued his sterling work keeping the motorsport fraternity entertained, and by the look of things, we might have ourselves another consecutive series win in the offing for the CSCA series. Thanks Mike, and thank you to everyone who supports this grassroots motorsport – if you haven’t tried it, trust me, it is a hoot, and very accessible.

On which topic, the next SSC Lotus Only Track Day has been announced for Saturday 29th October at Winton – be there if you don’t want to miss the best day on the track you can imagine (with pretty good company too). Go here to register.

I must admit to having dropped the ball on organising extra-curricular events, so if anyone has any great ideas for stuff we should do, please bring them along to the AGM and we can pool our ideas and agree how to progress. We will also be positioning an alternate approach to the monthly General Meeting model, so would appreciate your input to that discussion.

And finally, in case you could possibly forget, the Beyond Blue Eggs Benedict is on Sunday 25th at Ebony Hall in joyful memory of Maurice, and we will be running the Round the Buckets again, so anyone who thinks they are good enough to take the trophy off the wily Pete Walker should come along and have a punt!

I look forward to seeing you out and about, and in the meantime, as always, keep it safe, upright and on the blackstuff,

Pip pip,
Ashton