Renault Summer Party 2007

Lucas had more excitement for the rest of the afternoon, the Renault summer party! We arrived just after 4 pm, and sadly Lucas missed out on Mr Tumbles (BBC Kids TV presenter) singing one of his favourite songs, 'Heads, shoulders knees and toes'. He did however, manage to spend lots of time in a big bouncy ball playgym. He was so happy he could hardly contain himself!









We soon put Lucas to bed and left him with our semi-professional nanny, Laura who kindly agreed to babysit on a Saturday night, which left Nat and I free to party the night away in a sodden field in the middle of Oxfordshire.

Naturally, it began to rain just as we arrived. But it didn't stop us having a big night out. 90's hip/hop band Soul II Soul played for us, and they put on a top show.

Banbury mothers' group Summer Party

We were lucky to have fantastic weather for Nat's mothers' group unofficial summer party. One of the mum's was gracious enough to invite all the mums and families over to her house. All of us brought a dish of food and pitched in for the catering costs (i.e. paper plates and napkins).. it was a great day out.





Lucas enjoyed the large lawn to play on .. he got to practice his walking!

Banbury floods

You may have heard that we've had a spot of rain over the past few days.

This was the view of the River Cherwell on Saturday Afternoon.



Naturally, rail services were suspended for the day.



The Oxford canal, looking north and south (its down there somewhere)



Bridge Park was about 4 feet underwater, and sections of Castle Quay were flooded.



The Spiceball sports centre will require a lot of cleaning up.

Miscellaneous Lucas pictures

This post is mainly to keep my parents happy.



We bought him a 'Toddle truck' the other day which he loves. He also loves smashing down the block towers that I build him. The first day he got it he actually started wheeling it around upside down, he's now figured out it works better if you keep four wheels on the ground.



























Our fruit trees in the backyard started to bud ..

unfortunately to birds got to most of the cherries before we could pick most of them. The apples, pears and apricots have yet to ripen though.

Lucas can now stand unassisted, but he still requires some assistance when walking.

Chad Vader episode 7

Honda F1 Open Day

The following day was the Honda F1 open day. Bruce drove up from London to see it, and I thought it would be fun to 'see how the other half live'.

The Honda Factory tour was fantastic, but ultimately they sold WAY too many tickets and they didn't have the necessary infrastructure in place to cope with the croweds.

We left Banbury at 9:45 am, and arrived at the airfield Park'n'Ride at about 10:15 am, to be confronted with a queue of about 300 people lining up for some non-existant buses. We decided that we weren't going to put up with that, so we turned around and drove into Brackley (passing about four buses on the way, which were struggling to negotiate the C-roads and country lanes).

We parked our car a 5-minute walk from the factory, and began queuing for the Factory tour at 11:00 am, finally making it into the factory at 11:30 am. The tour itself was great, some interesting exhibitions and very friendly staff.

By the time we left the factory just after 12, the queue had tripled in size, we guessed it would have been about a 90 minute wait at that point. The queues for food and coffee etc. were also horrendous. The queue for the wind tunnel model shop was about 45 minutes long, and for that you got to see about about four small presentations of the 1/2 scale model (the total display was about 20 meters long) so we decided to just head home instead.

Contrast this to the Prodrive Day, where the longest I had to queue all day was 3 minutes for Chris Atkinson's autograph (who was very friendly BTW). The Prodrive displays were quite crowded (relatively) but as I am 6'3" I didn't mind standing at the back to see the Le Mans and WRC pit-stops. The Subaru exhibits were great (especially the 'how to build a WRC' one).

At the end of the day, Honda sold way too many tickets and the overcrowding spoiled the day IMO. However, hats off once again to the factory staff.

Prodrive Open Day

Last Saturday we attended the Prodrive open day. For those of you who don't know, Prodrive are a motorsport company run by David Richards. They are currently responsible for the Subaru World Rally Team, as well as the Le Mans winning Aston Martin racing team.

Their factory is also conveniently located just down the road in Banbury!




Lucas certainly enjoyed looking at all the race cars! These are Aston Martins BTW.











Pictures of the winning cars (with the Le Mans trophy on roof), and one of the winning drivers, David Brabham, son of Australian legend Sir Jack Brabham.

The factory tour was great, including a display of how to assemble a Subaru WRC car.



First you start off with the roll-cage and body panels. Then you install the heat shielding and all the wiring loom (1.2 km's worth!).



Then you install all the electronic control units and driver systems. WRC cars are amongst the most sophisticated cars in the world, with such fancy gizmos as electronically controlled torque transfer and active yaw control.



Then you assemble the suspension and drop in the engine. Note the amount of electronics in the engine bay!



The finished article!



We were then treated to a demonstration of a WRC-service 'pitstop'. In just under 7 minutes, they managed to change all 4 wheels, the gearbox, the intercooler.. and god knows what else.

Subaru driver Chris Atkinson (another Aussie) was on hand during the day as well.





You can read what a success the Open Day was here!

Autosport link

Le Tour comes to London

After the excitement of Silverstone, we headed into London for more world-class sporting action. As luck would have it, The Tour de France started this year in London, with a 7.9 km individual time trial through the streets of London.

We began in Trafalgar square, where big screen TV's showed all the action of the stage.







Thankfully London put on a great show with the weather (for only the 2nd time this summer). Perhaps it was too hot even for The Devil?









An added bonus was that I managed to pick up a pair of Credit Agricole cyclings shorts from a cash-only stall at the side of the track. I've been hunting these down ever since Stuart O'Grady rode for the team.. now I finally have them!