Adam's Spirit of Ixion Speech

......And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursted they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That rode with us upon Saint Ixies day

(The following is roughly wot I said at the dinner on Monday night at the Ixion@Cadwell Y2K1 trackday)

After apologising in advance for the crapness (almost descending to Dubya levels) of my speech, and its lack of Powerpoint slides, I discharged (fnarr) my final duty[1] as Spirit Of Ixion ... appointment of my successor.

IMHO, in order to fully honour and respect the judgement of my predecessor, I must accept that he made the correct decision. And since I haven't changed, I should be the Spirit again this year.

(In case the crowd turned ugly at this point, I had a cunning backup plan: choosing someone else)

The first job is to decide what the Spirit of Ixion is. To me, it involves such diverse elements as:

getting involved
sense of humour
popularity
interest in a variety of bikey activities
constructive abusiveness
being on ixion!
fanatical devotion to the Pope

So I ended up with a shortlist:

me (obviously)
Mel Reed
marvin
Jeff Wain
Richard Moore (even though he doesn't ride round in little circles like the rest of us do)

Maybe because this year I've thought more about him than the others, or maybe because the crap pun about "spirit" would amuse him ... the Spirit of Ixion 2001 is ...

Jeff Wain

This does leave a slight problem, because there's a possibility Jeff won't be able to choose his successor. Russell suggested we ask marvin to choose on his behalf. marvin said "fookin wossname", which we took to be gracious acceptance.

[1] Errr, the only duty, AFAICS ... unless you count opening all those supermarkets.