HERE COMES THE BRIDE (Part 2) And so our wedding day arrived bright and clear, all thoughts of solicitors, legals, fights and arrests behind us! Myself and my bridesmaids went to get our hair done in the morning and Kev slapped a piece of steak on his jaw to bring the swelling down after the rather unfortunate fight at his stag do. Fortunately, the bruise didn’t show up too much on the photos! Gavin drove my dad’s Mercedes Benz car all the way down the drive and back up the road to ...

HERE COMES THE BRIDE (Part 1) Our wedding preparations were going quite well. As we knew lots of musicians it wasn’t hard to find a local band and a DJ to do the disco. A friend of my dad’s offered to do the catering and the bar was set up with plenty of kegs from the local brewery in Burton on Trent. I had two bridesmaids and we all went to Birmingham one day to choose our dresses and shoes – it was all kept very simple really as I had no help or advice from my mum as most brides do....

THE TAX MAN COMETH - The court case was finally over and my dad had six months to leave the house. In the meantime my mum had to find the funds to buy him out and he had to find another house to live in. He also had an awful lot of stuff to move too! He eventually found a house in nearby Burton on Trent but as it was obviously a lot smaller he had to get rid of a lot of his possessions and one of the first things to go was his Lotus Elite. He advertised it in the local paper but instead of g...

SEE YOU IN COURT - The saga of my parents’ split continued as we grew up in our stately home, although their behaviour was anything but stately for most of the time! Seven years of arguing and fighting were about to come to an end and the solicitors had finally agreed on a date to go to court. We carried on helping my dad to run the Hall and he still went to his boat in Caernarfon at weekends to get away from the house but we were all getting weary of it now. We were young adults and wantin...

RACE TRACK ‘AFTER PARTIES’ Because my dad used to be a racing driver he was often invited to parties and open days at various racing circuits. He naturally knew lots of racing people and on this particular occasion he was invited to an Open Day at Donington Park. Tom Wheatcroft, a local entrepreneur, had bought Donington Park in the 1970s as he owned the largest collection of Grand Prix cars in the world at that time. In 1973 he opened a museum there to house them all and called it the Do...