We eagerly await the car shows now. Today was ‘Dubs in the Park’ – a Thames Valley Beetle Club event and it was so near to home it would have been rude not to go along!

The weather wasn’t great – in fact, David ended up washing the Lurker in the rain but it stopped by the time he needed to polish it before we set off out. I poked the camera around the edge of the garage door and snapped a couple of pics of him polishing away and then he noticed me and posed – I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a nicer photo of David. He looks radiant don’t you think? It’s the excitement of going to a show in his beloved Beetle I suspect.

Throughout my life I’ve been to loads of car shows but there is no feeling like pulling into the arena in a show car. It’s so exciting watching people watching the car.

Somehow we were expecting to find a field full of teenage hippies, in cars lowered to a couple of inches off the ground and huge stereos but in fact, there were very few of those. It was a really good event.

We had only been there a couple of minutes when Luke popped up with one of his kids and a long debate ensued about the wheels, windscreen wipers and engine. Luke restored the car and he looks on it as his baby. In fact, there were a few of Luke’s babies around the arena today.

Then we met the proud ‘Mum and Dad’ of Brian the Beetle whose 32nd Birthday was today. What a lovely couple. Brian was bought off ebay unseen (not sure if that’s incredibly brave or incredibly stupid) and the new owners have been working on making him pretty again since Christmas. They’ve done a grand job so far.

After meeting Brian’s Mum and Dad, my phone started to ring and David (the owner of a beautiful Volvo Amazon that we’d been next to at Wheels Day) was saying ‘where are you?’. He’d come along for a look as he’s restoring a Beetle for his son at the moment and he’s looking for inspiration. He also collected a couple of photos of his car from us that I’d taken at Wheels Day and had promised him copies of. Another really nice man and it seems we’ve a fair bit in common with his family. We wouldn’t have met him again had it not been for my Wheels Day gallery – he’d been searching on ‘Volvo Amazon’ on Google and had come across my photos of his car. I’m not sure who was more thrilled, me or him by his discovery. He loved seeing pics of his car online and I loved the fact that he’d seen the pics and left me a message.

He’s told us of another event in September that we’ll almost certainly do. I can’t wait.

All in all this has been a really fab day.