Chris Evans on a grrreat Jag
IT REALLY NEEDS TO GET THE JUICES FLOWING
CHANCED upon a marathon eBay session last week, following the random purchase of a vintage Battleship game from a charity shop near my mum’s. A fiver and in mint condition! Well, that was it. We spent the rest of Sunday trawling the web for all the iconic games we always wanted as kids but could never afford.
Difficult to imagine more fun. So many memories revisited in the name of endless future hours of joyous family interaction for not really very much money at all. And all design classics, from the box to the contents within. We are now the proud owners of KerPlunk, Battling Tops, Raving Bonkers, Operation, Mouse Trap, Rebound and Crossfire. All original, all in excellent working order.
I can’t tell you how much the kids love them. They haven’t looked at an iPad (or The Simpsons) since. God bless these vintage games, which are themselves gamechangers, sent from the past to help us save ourselves from an increasingly mindless future.
A bit like the big milk bottle news. This week it was announced that sales of milk in gorgeous glass bottles have increased 25 per cent year on year. How fantastic is that? More power to our army of diehard milkies, those heroic early birds who have stuck it out, fighting an out-of-control consumer society hell-bent on instant gratification and not much else. But they never gave up hope, waiting for the tide to turn and now it has. Two pints of gold top for the Evans family please, Mr Milkman – and one for yourself while you’re at it. Apparently, electric milk floats are about to make a comeback too. Another design classic. The Teslas of their day. Over to you, Mr Musk, a whole new market awaits.
My own current retro fantasy is an Eighties Jeep Wagoneer, after becoming obsessed with them in Los Angeles last summer. What an outstanding car. Beautiful, practical, powerful, comfortable and charming. Google it and you’ll see.
But I’ve promised not to buy anything with wheels till at least late 2019. My last purchase for a while, therefore, being my very own Skoda Wagoneer, the Superb Sportline, this column’s No1 car of last year, which bizarrely doesn’t get a mention in the ‘market rivals’ to this week’s test car, the new Jag XF Sportbrake R-Sport. I wonder why not? Admittedly, the Jag is better-looking and has a cooler badge on the bonnet. But seriously, that’s about it. Pretty much everything else considered, the Skoda either holds its own or wins hands down. So what we’re going to have to do in the name of patriotism is pretend that the