The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me. Ben Collins
kept his job with the company in spite of his feral offspring and we were invited back for a grander function a year later. The company was changing its vehicle fleet and new cars were dished out. I knew how disappointed he was not to be in line for a new Jaguar XJS, like the one the boss had ordered for himself.
We piled into the Rover to the accompaniment of Dad’s favourite driving soundtrack, the jangling guitar riffs from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
I was thoroughly briefed to avoid the swearing issue, but Dad was kicking off again about the Jaguar situation. Mum told him to put a sock in it.
I didn’t talk much as a kid and they probably thought I wasn’t listening. I felt detached from the absurdity of the everyday. I stared blankly at the blurred stream of green and yellow outside the window and dreamt of flying this low in a fighter jet. Secretly, I was in training.
We duly arrived at the party and made it past the introductions without a single thirteen-letter word. The do was well under way, with scores of business types mingling, networking and slurping their way up the corporate food chain. My old man was holding forth as ever, entertaining a group of young managers with a mixture of jokes and forthright discussions, interspersed by plenty of vigorous gestures and raucous laughter. Dad’s laugh was infectious. His eyes creased and his broad mouth spread into the enchanting grin that epitomised his joie de vivre.
I was loitering around the food table like a time bomb waiting to explode. I was already programmed with the view that the world was populated by good guys and bad guys, and in this room full of small talk and grown-ups I decided to break free of my shyness and act on a judgement call.
The boss was breezing past when I caught his eye. He felt he had to stop and feign some interest.
‘How is school then … uh … Ben?’ he asked.
‘Why can’t my daddy have a Jaguar?’ I replied.
He made some more talking noises that failed to make an impression on me, so I kicked him squarely in the testicles.
A small boy was ideally placed for such an attack. What I lacked in firepower was more than made up for by the accuracy gained from being at eye level with the target.
Judging by the way the boss’s legs buckled as he doubled over, I’d properly rung the bell on his High Striker. The second pain-wave swept across him, tears welled in his eyes and he dropped to his knees, straining to get his breath back. Something about the bell-bottoms draped from his parted legs on the Oriental rug made him look entirely ridiculous. The whole party erupted with laughter. The boss was as popular in the office as David Brent.
The importance of being truthful and standing up for myself had been instilled in me by my parents; I just added my own interpretation. Dad deserved that car and the boss was a troll under the bridge for suggesting otherwise. ‘Truth Tourette’s’ has stuck with me ever since. I can’t say that it’s made life easy, but I’ve enjoyed busting a few balls.
Dad didn’t get the Jaguar that time but he made up for it in later life. He changed cars as often as he emptied the ashtray. He must have owned about forty of the things. As soon as he could afford one, he bought it.
In spite of the love of cars that pervaded our family, my sole ambition was to be a fighter pilot. I wanted supersonic speed and the superhuman reflexes to go with it. I read endless accounts of Jump Jets winning in combat simulations against scores of faster but less nimble American F-14 Tomcats. My bedroom was littered with posters of fighter planes and books detailing every conceivable weapons system and their theatre of operation. I memorised payloads, thrust-to-weight ratios and the minutiae of flight. One hundred per cent nerd alert.
Repeated high scores on the Star Wars Arcade game proved to me that my acceptance into the RAF was a mere formality. ‘Waive the vetting process, fellas, send this one straight up to splash Migs.’
Mum recommended I go for an eye test just to be sure.
I perched on a leather stool and after considerable winding it was high enough for me to view the testing screen. I stared at a sequence of glowing shapes inside a hooded computer, listening to the optician’s breathing as he tapped his keyboard. His swivel chair clattered across the floor and he whispered a string of impatient instructions.
The test was over after a few minutes. My stomach tightened with a flush of excitement. I had taken the first step on a greater path.
‘How did I do?’
The optician glanced briefly in my direction. ‘They wouldn’t even let you load the bombs, son, let alone fly one.’
If he had only known how close his crown jewels were to extinction, he might have shown some respect. In Han Solo’s vernacular, I had jumped out of warp speed straight into an asteroid belt. My hopes and dreams evaporated. I was grounded.
I hated being told what I couldn’t do, but it was a powerful tonic. The harder they push you down, the harder you come back up, overcome and overwhelm. Mind you, there was no overcoming my eyesight.
Mum tried to console me by suggesting other possible careers – the forestry commission perhaps? I sat in my room for hours surrounded by pictures of machines that I would never fly.
My competitive instinct discovered another outlet for my emotions. My introduction to swimming was not exactly of my own volition, but it was the best thing that could have happened.
The Collins family moved to California when I was five; my father had been hired to turn around a haulage firm. My parents took me to the local swimming club. The coach was a tanned surfer dude with sun-bleached locks and a ripped torso. I shivered at the side of the pool, looked at the other kids pounding lengths, and decided against it.
Dad had a temper that was even quicker than his wit and I went to great lengths to avoid it.
‘Ben, get in.’ He didn’t look pleased.
‘No,’ I replied anxiously.
He went for the grab and I dived for cover. I managed to hook my arm through a sun-lounger, which came with me as Dad lassoed my kicking legs and pulled them towards him. I knew I was safe as long as I could hold on to that lounger. Dad upped the ante. He picked up the lounger with me attached and threw the job lot into the pool. I was in at the deep end and it was a case of sink or swim or come up with an alternative cliché.
I was furious and puny and grew angrier still as Dad looked down at me, failing to restrain his laughter. I set off at a rate of knots to the other end of the pool. Reluctantly, I discovered I was quite a fast swimmer.
After my turbulent initiation, I enjoyed training with the club and began competing. The whole family turned out for my first appearance at a regional gala and my grandma wished me good luck. ‘Go and win all your races,’ she told me. To my astonishment, I did. Winning felt good; it gave me a sense of purpose.
The Ojai Valley swim team punched well above its regional weight and I was soon competing at Junior Olympic standard. Our coach wrote training exercises on a blackboard during our daily sessions and I learnt never to read too far down. If the top read ‘600m’, that was all that mattered, even if the next line read ‘1,000m through crocodile infested swamp’. Focusing on anything but the present only made life harder.
The techniques were challenging, sliding your arms in a controlled arc around your body to propel yourself through the water. Mastery over breathing was essential and it developed the cardio-vascular system. The controlled intake and release of air was calming and a vital element for keeping the body platform stable and fast.
I was good but I tended to get carried away trying to go too fast, spinning my arms through the water like a windmill.
The explosive nature of the races was all-consuming.
The word ‘can’t’ was banned by our coach, but regardless how hard I trained with him or how much I attacked the water, I felt unable to produce true excellence. Without that goal, swimming became a hobby rather than my sport. But it remained an invaluable introduction to