I had my first Covid jab, four weeks ago! I felt shit for two weeks and now dealing with other shit but that's for later. My jab was in the Haynes International Motor Museum, in a separate area normally used for corporate entertainment. After a fifteen minute wait, to make sure I didn't froth at the mouth etc, I was directed to to fire exit. I stood at the edge of a field, my head was spinning, my legs felt weak but not from the jab! A deja vous moment indeed. I had stood on the same spot some 25 years earlier - my company, Lamberts Chartered Surveyors, placed an add on the back page of Inter City magazine -every first class compartment on UK rail network -and the only response came from a man called John Haynes. We met on the spot I was now standing, the land had been zoned for residential development - bingo my initial reaction- but John had other ideas, he wanted a change of use to build a museum.
Many visits and £30,000 in fees, later we shook hands for the last time. He took me home and met his wife for for tea and cakes. Just before I departed he said he would like to show me his barn! Inside was... I don't do cars but seeing £10 million pounds worth took my breath away.
For the past fifty years - before the internet- anyone who owned a car would also own an Haynes manual. John wrote his first one aged 18, the rest is a story of an eccentric genies.
John died in February 2019. A few months before I had the good pleasure to meet him again. Please enjoy his 'Folk Tales' story.
Om John Haynes.
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