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So, the big day had arrived. A week ago I'd
been packing my bags ready for the trip over. James and I both agreed that
there was something almost verging on disappointment that almost all of the
'festivities' leading up to the race itself were now over. It's a feeling
I've mentioned before and having been in France for the longest time ever before
the race, the feeling was even stronger. But the festivities were not
quite over as we still had what was possibly the most important pre-race event
of all to go to today - the Ten Tenths Le Mans Meeting...
There was no rush to get up though and we even
broke the habit of going up to the Bar Havane for breakfast. We decided to
leave around 10.30 and took both James' and Tony's cars, just to make sure we
had that extra element of versatility, should we need to split up at any point.
We had no traffic troubles and arrived in the Garage Blanc around 11 am.
It was a bit damp but the early morning rain had now stopped. Annoyingly,
for the third year running we were unable to get into our parking spot (we had
the same ones as last year), as some muppet had parked in our space. The
car park marshal came over and seemed indifferent to our plight, telling
us to just park in the adjacent two spots. It's ironic, whenever we
ventured into the car parks, the marshals would descend on us like a rash,
ensuring we knew where we had to park come raceday, but it seemed OK for others
to park wherever they felt like parking. Personally, I've little doubt
that palms are 'greased' as necessary by those who haven't bothered to buy
parking tickets - we know it happened just like that last year. Still, the
marshal seemed happy enough with where we'd parked, so we just headed on into
the circuit.
We made our way to the meeting spot that we had
'taken over' last year and waited for the other Tenthers to appear. The
first two were CTD (Mathias) and lemansfan (Walter). In the next 10
minutes or so they were joined by Truckosaurus (Guy) and Pascal, with his
daughter Amandine and son Vincent. We had brought some refreshments this
year in the form of a couple of bottles of red pineau des charentes to which
Pascal and and batmobile (Eric) added their splendid offerings. Both James
and Eric had 'decanted' their wine into plastic bottles as we had been warned
that glass bottles would be confiscated, however Pascal saw no need for such
precautions and inevitably had no problems at all getting his glass bottles in.
By this time Tenthers (and friends and relatives
of Tenthers) were arriving from all directions, adding the following names to
the list: Bernard B, Rob Blanshard and his friend Gary, Kpy (Chris), Kdr (Ker
- all too briefly!), isynge (Ian), GT6 (Simon) and Elaviel (Helen), nobster (Nobby),
Mal, Second Mal, Dominique and his girlfriend Isabelle, GTFour, bella (Maria)
and her friend Emma, Steptoe, Noddy and Jerome98, Vincegail (Vincent), whiteMR2
and friend Patrick, Dani Filth and new rally star Eon (!), Mike007 and Eric's
brother Stéphane (soon to become one77 on Tenths!). Including James, Tony
and myself, I calculate that we had a total of 34 Tenthers etc. at the 2012
meeting. I'm not sure if that's a record, but it must be close....
It was a great meeting, for me, the best yet, but
we needed to get on and take the 'team photos' before folk started to wander off
to take up their seats and positions for the start of the race.
And, as it
happens, the team photo was that little bit more important this year. Not
all that long before Le Mans, our good friend and Tenths and Le Mans stalwart
AllonFS (who came to Le Mans with the Tourists in 2008) let me know that
unfortunately the leukaemia he had suffered a few years ago had returned and as
he was now receiving treatment again, a trip to Le Mans was sadly out of the
question this year. Allon had also missed 2011, but for the happier reason
of an addition to the family.
I posted details of Allon's situation on Tenths
and, as you would expect with our members, the 'get well soon' messages soon
came flooding in. It was around this time that one or two members started
to exchange messages about a Ten Tenths photo at Le Mans with just such a 'Get
Well Soon Allon' banner to be displayed by those in the photo. To cut a
long story short, Chris (Kpy) worked hard on this and came up trumps with a set
of A4 banners for the meeting which (as you'll see from the photos) read 'Get
well soon AllonFS. See you back here in 2013'. Marvelous. And
we all really hoped that the message cheered Allon up - and we're still hoping
that it may be possible to see him at Le Mans in 2013 (although at the time of
completing this page - January 2013 - I know that Allon is still undergoing
treatment and a return in 2013 may be optimistic. I sent on a framed print
of the photograph with everyone named plus the banners themselves to Allon a
couple of months after Le Mans.
After the photos were done there was still time
for talking and drinking, but people did start saying their goodbyes and moving
off as time was rapidly slipping by. All in all, the meeting had lasted
for the best part of two hours. Over the last few years, the meeting has
become one of 'the' essential things for Ten Tenths members at Le Mans to do and
it's wonderful to see old friends again, most of whom we only see once a year at
Le Mans and, each year, to put faces to the names of those we get to meet for
the first time.
And here they all are (most of them, anyway!):-
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