Chris rediscovered bowls
Back on the normal afternoon show, Chris returned to a hobby he had loved much earlier in life:
bowls.
At around 17, he had joined Pinner bowls club with his friend Dougsy.
It was not exactly the stereotypical teenage obsession.
Chris had genuinely enjoyed it.
Now he had attended an open day at a bowls club near Maidenhead and discovered the appeal was still there.
Scott was fascinated by how naturally Chris could move from Premier League football and club DJing to lawn bowls.
Chris saw no contradiction.
A good hobby is a good hobby.
Amy was fighting the clutch
Producer Amy was learning to drive.
Her main problem was the clutch.
Finding the biting point.
Coordinating feet.
Not stalling.
Scott listened to the conversation and discovered something he had somehow missed:
you can learn and take a driving test in an automatic car.
The resulting licence limits you to automatics unless you later pass a manual test, but there is no requirement to master a clutch simply to drive at all.
Scott’s reaction was immediate.
“I’d like to go clutch-less, please.”
The phrase became the title of the podcast.
For somebody who had assumed the clutch was simply an unavoidable part of becoming a driver, automatic-only licensing sounded like a loophole designed specifically for him.
Josh travelled 140 miles for a hook-up
Hook-up Higher or Lower returned.
Caller Josh had travelled around 140 miles, from Birmingham towards Guildford, to see a friend of an ex.
Scott and Chris treated the number as a respectable benchmark.
Then came Nadia.
Her story was not remotely in the same category.
Nadia travelled 6,300 miles to Mauritius
Nadia had met a French man during a work or travel-company trip.
There was a kiss.
They stayed in touch.
Eventually she travelled roughly:
6,300 miles.
Destination:
Mauritius.
Scott loved how the feature could move from a long train journey to another hemisphere within minutes.
The stories were technically about mileage.
The distances often hid much more interesting relationship histories underneath.
Monday also meant The Who Game
The Who Game returned with more things everybody used to talk about constantly and then somehow stopped mentioning.
The feature had become one of the show’s most reliable ways of producing instant nostalgia.
Chris’s return to bowls almost belonged in the same category.
Old hobbies, old phrases and old bits of culture could all reappear unexpectedly.
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