Obviously, it takes a weird and obsessive sort of character to immerse themselves in the world of classics, but (as Martin Port's blog emphasises), many of our habits and personality traits would today probably be diagnosed as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
We all have our foibles away from the classic world, too. For example, I like the toilet roll to be turned so the sheets fall away from the wall and if I ever see one with them running against the wall, I feel compelled to turn it around. I know this may be interpreted as a bit weird (not least because it makes very little difference), but while if I were a celebrity this would be splashed across Heat like I was some sort of straitjacket fodder, I really don't think that it is that unhealthy or abnormal.
All of which rambling brings me meandering towards a vague sort of a point: parking. Hey? Yup, parking. There are only two types of car parkers in the world, the OCD ones and the rest.
I am one of the former group. I don't lose sleep over it or have panic attacks, but I like my classic to be neatly parked. If I am kerbside, I like the wheels to be equidistant from the pavement and both an acceptable not-too-near-not-too-far distance away from it. If someone has gone to the bother to paint white lines on the deck, I like my car to be not just parked within them, but to be parked so that each line is neatly and evenly framing the outline of my classic.
In real terms, this adds virtually nothing to my day, usually just one more trickle forward and back to sort it out. Thing is everyone I know does the same, or the opposite – abandons their car with no concern whatsoever for neatness or precision – and there appears to be no middle ground.
On a recent holiday in Corsica (finally, the agenda is clear, Elliott is rambling on like a loon simply as an excuse to tell us about his holiday and to post his bad-parking-spotted-on-holiday snaps) I discovered the most extreme, almost paramilitary incarnation of the non-OCD parkers that I have ever encountered.
