It’s always been a happy – and attractive – feature of anyone’s absorbing interest that it provides each of us with a comfy sanctuary from reality. Certainly that appears to be very true at the present moment with so much gloom, despondency and general mayhem in the wider world – while those within the confined motor sporting bubble just have their heads down as usual… tight-focused upon the immediate future and as always simply ‘going for it’.
Astonishingly, to me, it’s 50 years ago since in the opening months of 1974 the peculiarly British fiasco of a government’s ‘three-day week’ beset us. Militant workers’ strike actions to reinforce pay claims of up to 43% had built upon the energy crisis of 1973 as essentially Arab oil-producing nations embargoed supplies to those which had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. To safeguard the British electricity supply, prime minister Edward ‘Grocer’ Heath announced in December 1973 that from New Year’s Day, 1974, commercial consumption of electricity for “non-essential services and businesses” would be limited to three days per week. TV broadcasting switched off at 10.30pm, street lighting followed, gloom and cold prevailed. The economy stuttered into depression while unrest and protest provided virtually the only heat most of us could find.