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Brought to you by TheJudge13 contributor SpannersReady

I love my children. Mostly. That love is being challenged this Sunday. Instead of settling into my sofa to watch 700bhp beasts tip toeing around a go-kart track, I will instead be taking out four kids (not all mine) to the glamour of Sundown Adventureland . It’s a heaven for under 8’s and I don’t resent taking them there at all. We are certain to have a great time. I don’t even mind watching the grand prix on a time delay. I don’t care that the event has already happened ‘out there’ in the universe. When I am sat down watching a recording or a re-run then my mind accepts that it is real and current and I make believe like it’s live. This is all fine and well…. Just as long as I don’t find out the result. If I see the result then all the drama is gone and I lose that race day feeling. I still watch it but it’s not the same.

A few years ago I was in a remote location in a different time-zone. The race was not being shown live anywhere on the island. There was to be one showing later in the day from the local satellite at 1pm my time. The hotel I was in did have limited internet access and a feed of BBC news. This created quite a gauntlet to overcome if I was to avoid the result. It was a working morning for me so I needed to be online but avoid any social media or news sites. I needed to go and eat without catching the news cycle in the bar or overhearing any conversation. So I ordered room service for lunch like a fancy millionaire and limited my internet use. I had been hurt before. On a previous occasion I was waiting for the BBC iPlayer replay and I clicked on what I thought was the link to iPlayer sports section. It was in fact a link to the sports news. It was on the iPlayer page but diverted me away. I have since trained my Wife to prep the iPlayer video on my behalf to avoid spoiling the race through my own incompetence. (Smart TV now removes this danger)

When my room service arrived the friendly waiter saw my work on the desk and made a comment in admiration that I was working on a Sunday and working so hard that I needed lunch brought to me. Sheepishly I did confess that really I was just avoiding the race result. He found it amusing but also pointed out to me that the race would only be shown in the bar and not on the room TV feed. So there was to be final obstacle, the bar. I walked into the bar hoping it would be empty but it was still reasonably full from lunch. Thankfully in front of the television there was an empty sofa with no one in the adjacent chairs. It looked as if the F1 angels had set it up just for me. As the parade lap began a guy walked over having realised the race was being shown. He looked happy and raced over. Another F1 fan? Great, a friend for the race perhaps? Presumably he’d faced a similar trial and like me was getting ready to reap the rewards? He sat down and said, “Brilliant it’s on. Alonso won it didn’t he, apparently it was a good race”.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have done what I did next. Perhaps I should have swallowed my disappointment. But I didn’t.

-SpannersReady