I DON’T spend a huge amount of time idly browsing social media, but when I do I have a couple of favourite pastimes. One is baiting racists and bigots on local Facebook groups and another is delving into a wonderful resource called Very British Problems, in which discussion is usually around subjects as peculiar to our island as how to avoid people you know in supermarkets to avoid having to speak to them, the best ways of managing not to go to parties, how to get rid of visitors without offending them and the various colours and consistencies of tea and its accompanying biscuits. It’s a wonderful way to waste half an hour, as well as being delightfully reassuring to know that your eccentricities are not uniquely your own.
Another constant theme in Very British Problems is pettiness – after all, we’re a nation that goes out of its way to not directly offend, but thinks of nothing of doing things to irritate those who get on our nerves.
And that, in case you’re wondering, is why there’s a picture of a shocking pink XJ6 at the top of this page. It is the very definition of very British pettiness, and at the time of writing was about to go through the block at Anglia Car Auctions, unsurprisingly with a very low reserve.
It’s a striking and very distinctive thing, finished in Barbie pink with metalflake-effect paintwork, along with a white roof and white wheels. Anyone who was working in the colour and trim department at Browns Lane in the 1990s will no doubt be having kittens at the state of it, but if nothing else, it’s a one-off. And it really is very wellfinished.
So how did such a thing come into existence in the first place? Well, here’s the thing. The XJ belonged to an enthusiast who owned perhaps a few more cars than he ought to, or had space for. As someone who has as many cars as I have pairs of socks (actually, the cars might just edge it…) I’m always moving them around, I walk around with a lithium booster pack permanently in my backpack and there are certain individuals in my neighbourhood who despise the fact that I’m rarely seen driving the same car from one day to the next, even though I’m very careful to never park more than two at a time outside the house.
Part of the reason for this is that my cars are all pretty old, and my neighbours are awful snobs, who live in permanent fear that their late model, heavily financed BMW SUVs might catch a dose of the good old British rust by being in close enough proximity to them. Or perhaps it’s just pettiness? Who
