Are you sitting uncomfortably? Then I’ll begin…. In most of my daily life I am always the one to leap up and give my seat over to someone on the train, I help women carry buggies up flights of stairs, I hold charity shop doors open for groups of extremely slow, bosomy old ladies to bustle past me. Today I snapped. I was in McDonalds whilst waiting for my car to be fixed and I was expecting a long wait. I was sat at a small table, near the bin, with hard seats. Across the aisle from me were the padded banquettes by the window with a lovely view over the retail park and of the drive-thru. A lone woman occupied ‘the booth’. I eyed her spot and decided that if she left I would migrate there. As I chomped my fries, one eye on my book, the other on her she started to make leaving signals; She brought her bag up onto the bench beside her and packed her book away. . . .Then. . . . . she settled back down and sat there huddled two-handed over her cup. Bugger. Five minutes later, she put her coat on and zipped it up. . . . This is it, the time is now. . . . And then she settled back in her seat and played with her phone. For F**k’s sake. I, meanwhile had, unbeknown to her, been up and down in my seat about ten times anticipating her departure. I was now sat sidesaddle, book in hand ready to fling it at the table, coat hanging off one arm, rucksack ready to be kicked across the floor. You need to understand that I had pined for this banquette since the last time I had to spend several hours here waiting for my car to be fixed. (You may be thinking I ought to change mechanic). I eyed everyone that came through the front doors hatefully, willing them not to notice the imminent vacating of the banquette. Two or three sets of people came in, my buttocks clenched; they went straight to join the queue without assessing the seating arrangement. Good. Then suddenly, as my buttocks unclenched, hers seemed to be rising from the seat. She started to scooch, this was my moment, I was hovering like a jockey, she was taking eons to get clear of the booth, my thighs were burning. What are the official rules regarding when you can move in on a table? Be it McDonalds, or the pub, or Claridges. . . . . When they are putting their coats on? When they are clear of the table? Maintain a polite and un-predatory tactic and you will lose out to someone with fewer scruples than you. Bowl in there, finish the drabs of their drinks, help them put their coats on and hand them the empties to take back to the bar and you might be pushing your luck, in Claridges. As it became clear to not just me that she was leaving and just as I was inching ever so politely closer, I saw a withered finger from the corner of my eye pointing in her direction. A quivery voice erupted, “Look darling; there’s a seat in the window.” ‘Oh no you don’t bitch.’ I thought. Such venom surprised even me. Oh God, it’s an elderly couple. All the rules, the manners that I have grown up with regarding rolling over and letting old people have everything were in major conflict with the primal territorial instinct that had kicked on regarding MY banquette. In a panic I semi-shrieked in the face of the woman gathering her things, “Are you leaving?!” In the same breath, I anxiously screeched to the old couple, “I was just waiting for this table.” “What? Just you? But there are two of us!” She exclaimed in her best persuasive and yet oh-so-condescending old lady tone. “But you can have MY table.” I said gesturing towards it as if it was made of Werther’s Originals. “But you’ve only got a coffee.” She retorted, clearly confident of victory thanks to her trump card – OLD. “AND some chips.” I sing as I clamber determinedly, youthfully and with red face into the banquette, over the top of the other woman who still had not actually left yet. All etiquette had officially gone out of the window and I had turned slightly feral, but I got my banquette. I received the standard tutterings and mutterings of “No respect.” and two pairs of wronged, watery eyes bored into me as I sat cringing in my now ridiculous seating, no longer able to enjoy it, or my chips, or my book or even breathing. At that moment, I wished I hadn’t started this ridiculous debacle, my enjoyment of the booth was ruined and now two people hated me. I felt riled though. Before the old couple had even considered coming to McDonalds I was waiting for that seat to become free. The old couple were not to be left standing, they had seats and a table and everything, so did their desire for the table supersede mine just because they were older? Is it always fair to play the ‘elderly card’ just because you would quite like something rather than because if you don’t sit in that particular seat you may pass away? I will certainly be trying out this tactic at the local park this weekend, as I demand some bewildered child get off the springy, wobbly, ladybird seesaw thing due to him being younger than I am.

The Ferrari 250 GTO was a supercar and auto racing car made by Ferrari in the early 1960s. It is widely considered to be the quintessential Ferrari model, and one of the most famous sports cars of all time. The numerical part of its name denotes the displacement in cubic centimeters of each cylinder of the engine, whilst GTO stands for "Gran Turismo Omologata", Italian for "Grand Touring Homologated." In 2004, Sports Car International named the 250 GTO number eight on the list of Top Sports Cars of the 1960s, and number one as the top sports car of all time. Similarly, Motor Trend Classic named the 250 GTO as number one in their list of the "Greatest Ferraris of all time". The 250 GTO was designed to compete in GT racing. It was an orthodox (some would say conservative) evolution of the 250 GT SWB.[Who said this?] Chief engineer Giotto Bizzarrini took the chassis from the 250 GT SWB and mated it with the 3.0 L V12 engine from the 250 Testa Rossa. After Bizzarrini and most other Ferrari engineers were fired in a dispute with Enzo Ferrari, development was handed over to new engineer Mauro Forghieri and designer Sergio Scaglietti. The widely-admired body was developed from work done by Bizzarini and Scaglietti and perfected in wind tunnel and track testing. Unlike most Ferraris, it was not designed by a specific individual or design house. The rest of the car was a well-balanced presentation of early-Sixties Ferrari technology: a hand-welded tube frame, A-arm front suspension and a live-axle rear end, disc brakes, Borrani wire wheels. The five-speed gearbox was a step forward, if not really revolutionary; the metal gate that defined the shift pattern would in turn become a tradition that is still maintained in current models. The interior was stripped-down and simple in the extreme, to the point where a speedometer was not considered necessary for the instrument panel. Many of its switches came from the Fiat 500, and it was said that as the car was rushed into production, the original cloth seats were made from workers' overalls.[1] According to the FIA rules for sports car racing, at least one hundred examples of a car had to be built in order for it to be homologated in the GT class (as opposed to the less-restricted prototype class). However, Ferrari built only 39 250 GTOs (33 of the "normal" cars, three with four-liter 330 engines (sometimes called the "330 GTO" but properly the 330 LMB), and three "Type 64" cars with revised bodywork) but nevertheless the car was allowed to race in the GT class. Some say that Ferrari successfully argued that the model was technically a modification of the 250 GT SWB, some say that Ferrari's clout was such that it was better for the sport to allow the team to compete instead of dealing with a petulant (and crowd-depressingly absent) Scuderia Ferrari. The car debuted at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1962, driven by the team of American Phil Hill (the standing World Driving Champion) and Belgian Olivier Gendebien. Although originally annoyed that they were driving a GT-class car instead of one of the full-race Testa Rossas competing in the prototype class, the experienced pair impressed themselves (and everyone else) by finishing 2nd overall behind the Testa Rossa of Bonnier and Scarfotti. The success was not a fluke; the 250 GTO was an exceptionally capable racing car. At the time of its introduction it was (depending on choice of gears and final-drive ratio) most likely the straight-line fastest car on any race track; more subtly, but perhaps more important, it had no bad habits or nasty tricks in its wide performance envelope. In the best Ferrari tradition, it made normal drivers look excellent and gave great drivers an unsurpassable advantage. Years of development for its significant components, and traditional Ferrari robustness, also guaranteed that the car would last until the end of the race. In the end, the GTO won the World Manufacturer's Championship three years in a row: 1962, 1963, and 1964. The low production (39) allowed Ferrari to be selective about potential owners; if you were in the good graces of Ferrari himself, or his North American ambassador Luigi Chinetti, your $18,000 (early-1960s dollars, of course) would buy you the best GT racing car available at the time. The 250 GTO arrived as perhaps the last car that could compete on such a level and still act as something of a normal road car; more visibly, it was one of the last front-engined cars to be truly competitive at such a level. In the age before vintage racing, the 250 GTO faced the same fate as any other racing car of its time: as it passed into obsolescence, some were kept as regional race machines, while others were used as normal passenger cars. Only 39 have been built, and all 39 of them are still running