Letters to Nan

Letters to Nan

Published by Matthew Wooding at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Matthew Wooding

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

About Matthew Wooding

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Chapter One

I was once told by a very wise lady to find what you love doing and then find a way to make money doing it.

I sat in an endless line of Sydney traffic with my mind racing. I couldn’t wait to get home and share my news with my family – especially Nan.

My dream was to race, and I wanted to do it at the very top level in Formula One.

At any one time only twenty-two people in the world can call themselves Formula One drivers. I had a better chance of becoming an astronaut. On top of its rarity, it’s expensive to even get a chance in the junior categories of racing that lead into Formula One; we are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. To complicate things further, the path to Formula One runs through Europe alone. For a young Australian this meant not only relocating across the globe, but also needing to be very rich (or very talented with rich friends). I had the talent…but I would be competing against guys who shared my dream with millions of dollars of support behind them. I was at a disadvantage before I ever began.

As far back as I can remember I was watching the car racing with Nan; watching the Australian Touring Cars on a Sunday afternoon, cheering on our favourite driver, Jim Richards, and booing our nemesis John Bowe (I’m not sure why we didn’t like him. It was possibly his beard…). We would boo and blow raspberries at the television when his car was on the screen.

Our car racing fix wasn’t over by Sunday afternoon either; on Sunday night, the ultimate contest was on from Europe – the Formula One.

As a young boy I could never understand why they’d show the races so late at night. (As I got older I began to understand time zones and everything made a lot more sense!). The 10.30pm start time was a little late for me (I suspect it was a little late for Nan as well.), but the solution was simple: we’d record the race on the VCR to watch it Monday afternoon after school.

Mum would turn off the radio Monday morning to make sure I didn’t hear the results, but I seriously suspect Nan didn’t simply avoid the radio all day as she loved to listen to talk-back radio during the day.

Despite knowing the result, Nan would pick me up from school and sit on the edge of her seat with me to watch the race, never giving away a thing.

Nan’s driver of choice was Nigel Mansell, a legendary British driver. I always had a secret admiration for Aryton Senna, a three time World Champion from Brazil. He was simply the best, even though Nan didn’t particularly like him. While I never shared this with her, she picked up on it when I didn’t join in blowing raspberries at the TV when Senna was on screen. We soon developed a mutual dislike for Alain Prost, a rival of both Senna and Mansell and the raspberries flowed freely.

Some of my best memories are going to the Touring Car races in Sydney with my Dad and Nan. Dad had a similar interest in the sport and would often watch the races with us, though he didn’t partake in the raspberry-blowing.

Whenever he would suggest we go to a race meeting, I would always insist that Nan come as well. He must have loved having to drag his mother-in-law along to the races for his father-son time. I think this was something Nan was aware of as she’d sometimes decline the invite and tell me to go alone with Dad.

Going to the races on a Sunday came with an extra perk as well; Show-and-Tell on Monday at school was sorted.

I would dazzle my bewildered classmates with posters and photos from the previous day, more than happy to field questions from my audience, though questions were often few and far between.

In class, any writing assignment I was given would be twisted around so I could write about racing.

The perfectionist in me wasn’t happy to misspell driver names and I would ask my teacher how to spell them. Names like Mark Skaife, Tony Longhurst and Neil Crompton are tough for a young kid to spell. As I discovered later, they’re not much easier for a young kindergarten teacher to spell either. My obsession with racing had her spending her weekends watching the races so she would know what the hell I was talking about and how to spell the driver’s names. She even handed her James Cheat Sheet to my Year One teacher at the end of the year!

My addiction to racing didn’t fade with time, but I did pick up a second passion I also shared with Nan – football – especially English football.

Nan was a Manchester United fan. She had become friends with some people from Manchester during the war and followed the team ever since. I started to support Aston Villa.

This was the only aspect of our relationship that was tense since I hated Manchester United. Typically anything Nan liked, I liked.

I’m not sure why I didn’t follow Nan in supporting Manchester United, though I’m sure sibling rivalry played its part as my brother adopted United as his team.

I wanted to visit Villa’s home ground, Villa Park in Birmingham, England, like most kids want to visit Disneyland. I wanted to be in Europe to race, but if the opportunity came up to visit Villa Park, I definitely wasn’t going to turn it down.

Chapter Two

I was lucky enough to be taller than average for my age when I was growing up, which had the ultimate benefit as far as I was concerned: it got me behind the wheel of a Dodgem Car earlier than what was probably intended by the black height line as you enter the queue.

I’m not sure how you win at Dodgem Cars, but I remember being so nervous the first time I got behind the wheel. This was my first chance to prove myself and I was determined to go as fast as possible.

I picked markers on the floor to use as corners on an imaginary track and tried my very best to go as fast as I could around it. I’d get extremely annoyed anytime someone had the audacity to bump into me, and it was usually Dad who found it very amusing.

Once I was a teenager, I could race at go-kart tracks. Now this was proper racing. No more imaginary tracks on the Dodgem Cars, no-one to bump into me. I could go out on the track and drive as fast as I could. I went as often as possible (which was as often as I could convince Dad to drive me there and pay for me to use the go-karts).

Eventually I got a driver’s license and a job delivering pizzas so I could take myself go-karting as often as my heart desired.

I must have been going as fast as I felt like I was, because within a few months I had struck up a relationship with the owner of the track. He had introduced himself to me as Craig. He’d first noticed me when I broke his track record.

After another hectic Saturday morning at the track, he came up to me as I was changing to leave. It turns