Operation Gingermobile: The Hulme?

A friend of mine asked me if there were any other notable Hulmes (not that I'm particually notable, even for my Ginger activism.) In the midst of Googling for more notable namesakes, I discovered this incredible thing:


It's a Hulme - pronounced "Hull-Meh" - CanAm. This 7 liter, 600bhp supercar is designed by a company based in New Zealand and named after eponymous 1967 Formula One champion Denny Hulme.

Only 9 Hulme CanAms are being built a year - but new models are already being planned - including one with a windscreen! The one I'm excited about, the Hulme F1, will be a fully-enclosed grand tourer design along Le Mans specifications. If they can throw in a decent boot and windows you can climb in and out of, I'm sold!


Check the magnificent Hulme motor company out at their website.

Some Thoughts...

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can see that I've had some wonderful experiences in the past. Tresco, Paris and Long Island were wonderful and I made great friends and had great times.

Stupidly, at the time, I didn't quite realise how lucky I was. I kept on looking at the horizon for the next big break. I was always unsatisfied.

So while I was driving back today, the cool sounds of Miles Davis wafting out of my SIRIUS radio and the warm evening breeze on my face, I gave it a thought and realised something astonishing.

I was incredibly happy. I was incredibly lucky. I was somewhere where I wanted to be.

Where I am right now is pretty much where I've spent the best part of a decade struggling to be. In America, behind the wheel of a stupid old car, with a solid job to go to and somebody who loves me to come back to.

Now I'm not 'giving up.' I'm still on the prowl to achieve more and go further. But right now, I realise I could freeze this moment for the rest of my life and be proud of it.

I sacrificed a lot to get to New York. Relationships and friendships and the chance to be close to the people I love. But as Simon Templar said in The Last Hero: "Nothing is won without sacrifice."

I just wanted to write this down because I know it can't last forever. It might not even last until tomorrow. But right now, where I am at this moment... People wait a lifetime for it. So even if I live to 102 and wind up destitute in a gutter, I'll always look back and appreciate how incredibly lucky and blessed I was at this exact moment in time.

Even more than I appreciate everything that's happened to me, I'm grateful for being given the insight to actually appreciate it. To realise that things are good while they're still good, instead of looking back in five years time and thinking: "Damn, if only I'd have realised how lucky I was..."

I do realise how lucky I am. In fact, the only thing that scares me is the inexorable knowledge that all things, good or bad, must come to an end.

Happy Birthday!

Today began the inexorable countdown to the big 3-0.

365 days to do all those things I'd promised I'd do before I was thirty.

Really, there were only three of those.

1: Move to America (almost there.)
2: Get my first book published (well, at least I've written it)
3: Earn a living writing (you call this a living?)

I'm completely astonished at how fast time has gone. Especially the last couple of years.

Where have they gone? What have I become? How come I look in the mirror and see somebody I hardly recognize? Can anybody tell me where the witless, but well dressed adventurer went and who this chubby, scrubby writer is?

During our week in France, I found a big box stuffed with photos. Pictures of my from years ago, when I was a kid living in Hampshire. Then more, from school in Devon, lots from university and then piles of smiling photos of me, looking sleek and well dressed for perhaps the only time in my life, with my arm paternally around the shoulders of myriad American girls with beautiful tans and big teeth.

Hard to think I spent my last summer in Paris over two years ago - and that was the end of an era. Since then I've become a veteran of the radio business. I say veteran - this is the kind of show in which people have short, glittering careers and then go a bit nuts and drive their cars through the door of their radio station. However the REAL vets, like my old boss Gordon Drummond, have been in it for donkey's years.

Anyway. Now I work in Media. I wear jeans to work. I don't shave every day. I have got a bit tubbier. I get grumpy if I don't eat lunch.

It's so weird to have 'grown up,' because I don't feel I have at all. My insecurities and ambitions burn just the same. I keep thinking I've got all the time in the world - but days like this make you realise it's trickling inexorably away.