Warning! Long post alert!Today, my prize arrived. It caused an amusing anecdote at my house. Mum picked the parcel up, looked at the first line of the label and wondered "who is this bloke and where on Earth does he live?". Dad apparently went over to see what the fuss was about, spied the parcel label and pointed out that the (very masculine) name at the top of the label was in fact the sender's name.
Still unenlightened, he looked at the next line. This had my house on, but then he saw "Alianora La Canta". At this point, Dad went to the phone book and Mum decided to look for me (since I am the only other occupant of the house). I'd half-forgotten there was post coming for me (even though I was and still am also waiting for a job application form... ...go figure). Naturally, when I saw the label, I was in a position to tell my parents that the parcel had come to the right house and it was intended for me. It hadn't occurred to me that it might be worth telling my parents what psuedonyms I use on the Internet. There's a moral in there somewhere...
The parcel was absolutely enormous. First, there were half-a-dozen inflatable plastic thingies with "No pillow" "No flotation aid" and "No toy" written on them. Clearly these were there to protect the rest of the parcel. There was absolutely no way that whatever was under that lot could be in anything but perfect condition - the combined bounciness of these things would probably have deflected a cruise missile. Having assured my parents that there was a "goody bag" under all this lot, and picturing a hat and a couple of trinkets in my mind, I removed the thingies, grinned, and spotted...
A McLaren bag. This is one of the small kit-bags in the style used by the team for pretty much all of this century so far. Black never goes out of style! Mum particularly enjoyed inspecting every single pocket. A pocket at the bottom of the bag even provided a secure wallet substitute area. In fact, there seemed to be a storage area for every conceivable purpose short of carrying a kitchen sink! It also has Mum's seal of approval for quality and likely durability - if you wanted to use it as an everyday bag, it would stand up to the wear and tear.
The bag on its own would have been a very good prize, but there was more to come. While Mum was inspecting the bag, we found that the following items had found their way on board for the trip to my house:
A bright-blue teddy bear. I called it "Kimi" - the name stitched onto the front was a good clue! It has a number "4" stitched onto the right foot paw, which makes me think that this is a 2002-spec Kimi Raikkonen support bear. It will now go to live with the large collection of other stuffed toys on my bed.
A McLaren flag. I haven't taken it out of its packaging yet, because clumsy me would undoubtedly never get it folded that tidily again
. I can save it for special occasions.
Two A6 McLaren notepads. The silver-effect covers are so cool. Again, I want to save these for special occasions, in this case because drawing or writing on them would feel like spoiling an immaculate McLaren Technology Centre floor with spilt oil. Still, looking at them is lovely.
A "disposable" McLaren camera. I say "disposable" because it is a one-use camera, but what do you think the chances are of me letting go of such a gorgeous camera for the sake of 28 pictures? I think I'll stick to my PDA for doing pictures and putting this camera nice and safe to look at instead.
As dare predicted, a cap made its way to my house as well. A bright blue Renault team one. It's a difficult one to date, there being no label in the cap, but it is from some point between 2002 and 2006. It's a tobacco-branded version.
The Renault lanyard, on the other hand, is discreetly
not tobacco-branded. I think this may have come from the same year as the cap, but it's from 2003 or later due to the i-mode sponsor. It's got two attachments on the end - one for passes and a three-pronged connector that will accept (among other things) the connector at one end of my USB flash drive. In fact, I suspect it was originally there to give the option to Reanult staff to carry removable storage devices safely.
There's a Renault F1 keyring in a presentation case. Rather than the cheap logo-on-a-ring job that you can also get from Renault (and every other team on the grid), this is the posh, heavy metallic car replica. It's a fair replica as well, even including the four grooves in each tyre. You wouldn't want to put car keys on it, but that's not a problem for me as I only have a house key so far! Besides, it's so pretty that I think it would be better off in its case and put on a table to enjoy being seen.
GP Wizard obviously wasn't taking any chances with the Renault T-shirt. It's an XL, which is the largest type of T-shirt sold by the teams. I'm an L, but I like baggy tops, so I'm happy. It's one of the simple style of top, with "Renault F1 Team" emblazoned across the top. It will be great for bright summer days.
Finally, there was a Renault pen. A tobacco-friendly 2002-2006 version, it writes in a solid black ink and looks pretty sturdy.
I would like to thank GP Wizard enormously for this very generous prize and for creating the competition in the first place. Also, I'd like to thank everyone else who competed in the competition for giving GP Wizard an opportunity to use his hat, as well as for making me smile a lot during the contest. Happy foruming and best of luck for the next competition!