If you’ve been paying attention you might recall an event a few weeks back titled Rained Off. If you don’t recall it, that’s fine. I’m not going to have a go, I won’t even know if you don’t tell me. You’d best click on the link and have a read of it though – just in case I give you a test later. That’s the sort of thing I’d do. Rained Off was the event that SHOULD have been Claire’s Birthday. In the end, it was her birthday celebrations, but it’s hard to feel like celebrating when you’ve got your arms around a particularly tall man, encouraging him to include you under his spread-eagled coat-flap shelter. That evening was planned to include a next-day outing to a Go-Karting track. Only, perhaps more predictable than even the weather – after drinking all night and getting in at 5am, everyone was a bit too tired to move. Thankfully, the spirit stays strong in some, and last weekend, the mis-matched bunch of misfits calling themselves Claire’s nearest and dearest got together once more, and set out to burn some rubber. As it turned out, although the weather was a lot better (less heavy rain), rubber wasn’t quite burned, but more... drowned.

Revolution Karting is somewhere near Mile End. I couldn’t tell you exactly where – nowadays, another traditional male role has been extinguished. If you need to follow directions, it’s no more up to the alpha male in the group to loudly dictate ‘The Way’ then pretend it’s what he meant to do when everyone realises you’ve been walking in the opposite direction for 30 minutes. None of that, the responsibility now falls to the alpha iPhone user, to direct us the wrong way and turn back to the station.

When you arrive at the place, after parting with £20 – I’ve no idea how reasonable that is... what’s the going rate? What even is a fair amount for the level of entertainment? – you fill in a form to promise not to sue if 43 year-old Kevin (on his stag-do) turns your kart into a molten ball of metal, fire and mid-life crisis. Then you follow the group into a garage where you get a 20-minute tutorial on the flags, the track, the kart and the rules. This felt a bit like a school lesson, all very enjoyable. But I wish I’d have taken notes. There’s so much to take in... ‘If a marshal waves a yellow flag at you, the car ahead is a lap behind and letting you through, speed up and overtake! However if a marshal holds up a lemon flag... the car ahead has had crash, is in the middle of the road, facing you behind the next corner, DO NOT SPEED UP! If you do not adhere to these 247 rules I’ve taught you in 15 minutes, you WILL be stopped, banned from Go Karting forever, and someone will pull down your pants from behind for everyone to point and laugh.’ By the time I actually pulled on my overalls and climbed into the designated kart, I was petrified of getting onto the track. Not of crashing, the kart’s pretty sturdy, they don’t go that fast and the tyre barriers are nice and squishy, but the instructor’s words lay heaving in my mind ‘if you DARE lose control on this, your first ever time in kart and touch the barrier, you’ll be BANNED!’

10 seconds after I set off and the ‘race’ was underway, I wondered what all the fuss was about. I’d already passed the two karts ahead of me on the first two corners and was making headway up to the bumper of the third. Lewis Hamilton look out! Your reign as the Golden Boy of Mclaren F1 is about to come to a... Oh BOLLOCKS that’s a corner... Arghhhh! After that I didn’t pass anyone else, and must have been lapped 30... 40 times (during the 16 lap race). I was certain they’d remotely turned my engine down as punishment for crashing – I only scratched the barrier – which they said they’d do if I so much as looked a marshal in the eye. Roughly 8 laps in, I realised why it felt a bit slow... I’d had my foot on the brake... constantly. You see they make all the karts one size. But the thing about people... is they don’t come in just one size, they come in lots. So they have different ways of comfortably encouraging small people’s legs closer to the pedals (booster seats), or moving the pedals closer to your feet. The latter is a simple system where a metal bar, flaps over from the top of the pedal, it sort of sits over the bottom half, making the pedal protrude about 3 inches further out. This feature wasn’t covered in the any of the 60 hours of training. So when I got into the kart, I thought the flaps were just foot-rests. I was pushing (slightly) both brake and accelerator at all times! Meaning I could neither move anywhere near my true pace, nor slow down from that meagre speed to slow down for corners. Needless to say, I was last.

After figuring out how to actually use the pedals (I still had trouble because my knees had to be up around my ears to avoid them altogether – the pedal boosts are mainly for little girls, I avoided wondering why they put them on my kart) I thought ‘RIGHT’ Now we’re gonna see my real pace. Un-lap and overtake everyone on the last lap? Why not. Turns out there are lots of reasons. I was still pretty shit, getting my head flushed down the figurative toilet by bigger and stronger boys. On one lap, I was particularly concentrating not to touch the brake and doing surprisingly well, until I was lapped, easily. I thought... ‘I’m not having this!’ I’m taking you back you bastard, no matter WHAT the cost. I don’t care if I get banned...’ I coasted up to the back of her, in the slipstream. Moved out and beat her under braking to the inside of the corner, YES! Now just turn in and... Arghh! She’s only bloody rammed me into the corner. She’s now halfway down the straight, braking for the next corner and I’m sat at a rubber tyre tea party, waiting for a marshal to kick me back into play.

She rammed me! I thought – she’s gonna get a warning... nope. No one had been watching. After all that fear dialled in at the start. After the chequered flag, climbing out gingerly, ashamed of our recent performance, chatting about how we did – you don’t get your places, or times afterwards. Apparently you CAN get your lap times timed, but only if you ask before the race, but they don’t tell you this until you finish. Nice.

For this experience you’ll pay £20 to race in the ‘Open Session’. That’s supposed to include two 8-lap races (although we did 16 laps in one – which is shit) amongst whoever else is there on the day. You get a rolling start from the pits (it’s a race to get your overalls on and sit in the first kart – no points for chivalry here!); you don’t have a clue who anyone is during the race; if you crash you’re fucked, a marshal might kick you back in after he finishes his book; the other twats you race with go too fast, overtake you then spin, so you have to really slow down, fucking up your race; then you don’t have a clue where you finished or how well you did afterwards. It’s a bit shit. You can pay for your own group’s private session where you get to race only with your group, get a podium ceremony with trophies, and pop champagne. But unless you’re with 29 others it’s £65 a head! You can probably buy your own F1 team with that kind of money.

Probably.