Grand Prix or Not Grand Prix - that is the question !

It's that time of the year again - the F1 Grand Prix motor racing season - the time of year when my husband becomes infatuated with the TV.

Every thing stops in order to watch skinny men in one piece jump suits racing around a track being paid ridiculous amounts of money.

He will yell at the telly, shout at people to "Pit", criticise their driving and what's more he will stick his fingers in his ears and "La La La" in order to avoid hearing any result of the race on the news - before he has seen it himself.

He cuts out the fixtures when advertised in the paper and keeps it on a notice board in the kitchen.

He knows everything about their cars and can tell you who is in what car and where they are - he would make a fantastic commentator as he is very knowledgable to the point of being a bit of a Grand Prix nerd!

I must admit that I do actually quite like the Grand Prix myself - until I end up having to do everything in the house every weekend whilst he shouts obscenities at the box.

A couple of years ago we went to the South on France on holiday and were lucky enough to visit Monaco - funnily enough when the Grand Prix was on!

Monaco itself is beautiful and for the race weekend it was full of tourists. There were humungous yachts and ships docked in the bay, oozing money - one with a helicopter pad on the back. It was a completely different world to the one we are used to.

Malc had bought tickets for the 4 of us to watch the race. How exciting was my first thought. I imagined that we would have a great view and it was something we hadn't done before. The Royal family of Monaco were at the race , as were a variety of celebrities.

Our tickets led us up a small road , I looked at the ticket - there was no seat number.

"Are we in the right place?" I asked.

"Oh yes we're up here on the bank - we'll have a great view" he said.

The bank was a dried up earth mound - I was wearing a pair of white shorts.

As we tried to clamber up the mound with about 50,000 other people , I suddenly thought , "What the hell are we doing!". We had got there at 1000 and the race didn't start until 1400 so we were stuck. If you got up you would lose your place.

It was packed with people absolutely everywhere - invading people's personal space was the norm it appeared- as you practically had people sitting on your lap.

The hill was actually quite steep and the ground was really soft loose earth.

At one point in time we were all lined up in family order up the bank - Georgie sitting in between Sam's legs, Sam sitting in between mine and me sitting in between Malc's . All the our legs outstretched and aiming down hill.

We soon got to know our "neighbours". We had a 7ft3" African man to our right who must have had sized 16 feet - he was enormous.

To our left we had 3 french guys who were chain smokers. I hate smoking fullstop and was getting really annoyed at them blowing smoke over us.Luckily they moved on.

Every so often the whole family would start to slide down the bank, a bit like the "human avalanche" - it was really slippery. We kept having to pull ourselves up where we could - it was terrible.

If one of us made a sudden movement the whole lot would go - we had to have a co ordinated approach for anyone who was getting pins and needles in their buttocks and needed to move!

On one of our 72 sliding moments down hill, our African friend saved the whole family, when Malc grabbed hold of his big toe which was sticking out of his sandal(Thank God it was just his toe that he grabbed !).

His big toe was about the same size as my foot -huge ! it was very embarassing having your husband Toe wrestle another man but we were very grateful !

In the end we actually did have a good view of the race but it would have been much nicer to have had a dust free seat.

By the time we got back to where we were staying some hours later we were filthy - but as most things we do it was a memorable experience !

I asked the question today - "Why are there no girl racers in the Grand Prix? ( apart from the Dolly birds holding umbrellas and walking up and down)the one unthought sentance in reply was very sexist - "Well it's very physical and you have to wee in the car".

What a load of old rubbish ! I ranted on about how physical child birth was and the fact that my bladder will last longer than Malc's in a test of endurance and I could certainly hold it for a 2 hour race.

I also added the very truthful fact that everyone knows - "Women are much better drivers than men!

So why are there no women race drivers in the Grand Prix? - It's very wrong!