“Had letter about Scalextric cup”
At last, a random diary entry from 36 years ago that I have some level of conscious recall about!
For those not in the know, Scalextric is/was a slot-car racing ‘toy’, hugely popular with kids (and, I suspect, many Dads) in the 60’s and 70’s.
A couple of Christmases previous to 1972, my dear old Danish grandfather visited us, and was kind enough to gift me a simple figure-of-eight Scalextric set with a couple of cars. In the interim months I had added to the set, spending precious pocket money on a few extra lengths/curves of track and some cars, including, I can remember, a pair of 1:32 scale Jaguars.
It was never as much of an addiction as my silly football notebooks or Soccerama, mainly due to the fact that it took up a LOT of floorspace in the front room, so was not especially popular with Mum and her fastidious cleaning schedule. But every couple of weeks I would construct everything – including replica grandstands and tiny spectators – and enjoy sending both cars round the track for a few hours or so.
Naturally, being a kid, I would revel as much in the screeching accidents as driving the ‘circuits’, going so far as to set up grisly ‘incidents’ involving, yes, the tiny spectators.
The “Scalextric Cup” of which I speak in my diary was a racing competition due to be held at Southampton’s “Edwin Jones” department store. I had seen the competition mentioned in the newspaper and blindly, naively and somewhat optimistically entered myself, deciding I was ‘good enough’ to take on the ‘big boys’ in racing these little electric bits of plastic round the track. The letter confirmed me as a competitor and that my first race was scheduled for Saturday February 19th, 1972.
If that doesn’t build up throbbing anticipation for readers of this blog, then I don’t know what will?!
Excerpts from a 70's Teenage Rock Opera 