We live our lives forever taking leave - Rilke

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Monday, 5 November 2012

Sunday, November 4/2012

Wake ten minutes before the mobile alarm, which has been set for six. There`s a tiny bit of rain but we layer up and take the umbrellas - off to see the beginning of the Brighton to London run, the worldès oldest motoring event, begun 116 years ago. All 500 cars are pre-1905 and a few of them pass us on Bayswater Road as we walk to Hyde Park in the pre-dawn, their small frames and spluttering cylinders seeming very vulnerable in the mercifully thin early Sunday traffic, the rear lights mere pricks of red in the headlights of a double-decker bus.

Gathering in the park, they look considerably jauntier, brightly painted and decorated with brass. there's a huge variety, no two alike. the largest are four cylinders and the smallest one we see is little more than a tricycle, raising the question of the point at which a vehicle is declared a car. A happy variety of drivers and passengers as well, some in period dress and others, more prudently, in waterproofs. It will be a cold run for those without rain gear as the rain is heavier now and few cars are closed in. Some of the unprotected woolly clothes must be sodden before their owners reach the start line. And Brighton, sixty some miles away, is a three hour journey for these cars. but everyone is cheerful, repacking the wicker trunks, checking the engines, enjoying a last cup of coffee. A steam engine billows a fog at us and some cars get push starts.

There are some famous drivers here, we know, mingling in with the others. Racing great Sir Stirling Moss is driving with his wife in a 1903 car that has done the run thirty-five times, and Nick Mason, drummer for Pink Floyd , is driving a 1901 five litre Panhard. Mason has driven in the run every year since 1985 and says his passion for cars predates his inolvement with music. Motoring rugs covered with pastic, rain dripping from broad-brimmed leather hats, tiny squeeze bulb horns tooting and they're off. And we back by tube from Hyde Park corner to dry off ourselves.
Motorsport not over for the ay, as noon brings coverage of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - a close race with a surprise Raikkonen win.

Overheard at Waterloo Station: You don't get it - the police want ME.