Dear Fernando and/or Mark,
Tomorrow you go head-to-head in a showdown for the Formula 1 World Championship, but when the tarmac cools and the man who drills your tyres on is soaking in Radox™, which one of you will emerge as the victor? Fernando with his manta-ray hips, or Mark with his steak-jammed abdomen? I don’t know, only Bernie Ecclestone knows that, but I do know this: two men who come together on the track, cannot invest in property together. I should know…
In the late eighties I worked as a butcher (my speciality was haunches). One Summer, I delivered a casket of 150 Toulouse sausages to Donnington race course. They were to be lunched upon by clergymen. While there I was offered a swift lap of the track by Gordon, a gentleman janitor. It was exhilirating, and I soon returned often to race with Gordon while clergymen ate their lunch. After several months, Gordon and I were enjoying a lemonade post session, when he asked if I’d like to enter into an arrangement with him. His offering? The purchase of a subsiding bungalow near Harwich. Gordon told me the land was worth a substantial sum, and were we to buy the property and knock it down (he was keen to do this himself, using a hire car) we would make enough to pay for a ‘Pauper’s Parade’ – no Fernando, I never understood the reference either. I was intrigued, and after a period of consultation with friends, family and my dentist, I took the plunge investing all the money I had made trading BOAC shares in my teens. Needless to say, the project failed. We couldn’t sell the house, and it materialised that with 6 points on his license Gordon found hire car fees to be prohibitively expensive. We eventually flipped the bungalow to a property developer called G. G. Staffles who, rather bizarrely, turned it into a short lived truffle museum. He died soon after, and his estate let the property perish at the hands of weasels, stoats and other ferrel (but crucially local) beasts.
So, you see ‘nando and Mark, this is a tale of caution. Whatever happens on the racing circuit, and whatever may happen over a brandy in the paddock later, don’t get involved in property together, I beg of you. I wouldn’t want to see either of you struggle with mortgage forms only to be disappointed. That’s a fate I wish only on Chris Tarrant.
Best of luck for tomorrow.
Yours,
—
H Rumbelow
Herbert Rumbelow's Weblog 