RICHARD PORTER
Received a car-themed gift for Christmas? You’ll be wanting to offload…
HI KIDS! TIDY OF BEARD AND EERIE OF manner, it’s Noel Evomonds here with another rip-roaring edition of Swap Shop, and what a bumper show we’ve got for you now that Christmas has been and gone. I asked all of you boys and girls for the car-themed Christmas presents you wanted to swap and our post bag has been bulging with the results, so let’s get cracking!
Our first letter is from Graham in Stevenage and he says, ‘Dear Noel, I once vaguely mentioned to my aunt that I liked cars and every year she now sends me contrived car-related gifts that make no sense. This year it was a kitchen knife set, but the handle of every knife has a gearknob on it for no readily apparent reason and then the bit you grip is made of carbonfibre, and it comes with a chopping board that’s got pictures of not-quite-rightlooking F1 cars from 30 years ago on it.’ Graham adds that he’d like to swap this for a normal knife and chopping board set that doesn’t make his kitchen look like the set to a bad ’80s movie about a nine-year-old boy who has his own apartment.
Let’s pop that on the board and move on to our next letter, which is from Iain in Dundee who says, ‘Dear Noel, I have a Renault Sport Mégane R26.R that I love, and for some reason my family mistakenly believes that I would like this love to be reflected in a new wallet which has a Renault logo on it. But I don’t because I’m 34 and perfectly capable of separating out different aspects of my life rather than requiring every element of my existence to radiate from a single item that others seem to think defines me!’ Well Iain, that’s a very good point and we’ll put your baffling wallet on the board here.
Anish writes in from Stockton-upon-tees and says, ‘I try to watch Formula 1 racing when I can and I suppose I’d say my favourite team is Ferrari. For some reason that has led my girlfriend’s parents to think I would like a T-shirt with an airbrushed picture of Charles Leclerc on the front and maybe if I was seven that would be true, but I’m not so I don’t and I would like to swap it for a normal T-shirt that doesn’t needlessly reflect a passing interest of mine.’ Okay Anish, your T-shirt is on the board.
Gavin writes from Exeter and says, ‘I subscribe to evo
‘Each kitchen knife has a gearknob on it for no apparent reason and the bit you grip is made of carbonfibre’
magazine and have owned a few interesting cars including a Lotus Elise 111S, a Golf GTI Edition 30 and a Porsche Boxster Spyder, and I now have a Porsche 991.2 Carrera GTS. On this basis, my family decided what I needed for Christmas was a shaving set called Maximum Revs that comes in a chequered flag pouch containing a razor made of fake carbonfibre and a shaving balm labelled “Speedway” that comes in a bottle styled to look like an alloy wheel from an unspecified car of the 1990s.’ Gavin goes on to say, ‘I’m also a fan of modern South Korean cinema but I notice they’ve never bought me a bottle of Oldboy after shave, only car stuff.’
A very good point, Gavin, and your shaving set is going on the board so hopefully someone will phone in for that. 01 811 8055 is the number and our operators are ready to take your calls. None yet, so let’s keep going with another letter, this time from Mark in Worcester who says, ‘Dear Noel, in November I had casually mentioned that I needed a new watch. Unfortunately, my wife knows that I like cars so for Christmas she bought me something made by a company called Technomechatronical, specifically a watch called the Autobahn 300, which is inexplicably designed to look like a rev counter, except of course the numbers on a rev counter don’t go all the way around the dial and the numbers on a watch should, so it doesn’t work as a design conceit, and then they’ve made things worse by labelling the sub-dials on the chronograph with “Fuel” and “Boost”, which makes no sense whatsoever, and if you look carefully the dial has a fake carbonfibre texture, but in white, and there’s a red and black chequered flag effect running around the edge. Also, I think the strap is meant to resemble a harness belt. I would like to swap it for a normal watch that just looks like a watch rather than something a toddler might come up with because they were thinking about cars that day.’
That’s smashing, Mark, and I’ll certainly pop that up on the board with all the other car-themed things we’ve received. Let’s just see if we’ve had any calls about any of this… No. Not one. So I’m just going to take these car-themed objects and throw them onto this bonfire. Lovely! Okay, that’s enough swapping for now. Here’s Jethro, who’s been re-examining the direction of performance cars…