JIM Clark, a farmer as well as a formidable racing driver, was motoring through Berwickshire one day when he saw a shepherd's wife waiting at a bus stop. He didn't hesitate to stop and offer the lady a lift to the railway station. Although she was grateful, the speed at which the trip was executed left her dazed. Jimmy only knew how to drive one way.
"If you don't mind, Mr Clark," the woman said after staggering from the car, "I'll get the bus next time."
A private man, who didn't let strangers get close, Clark was most at ease at home in the Borders among his ain folk. Jim was happy to sup
a pint at the local pub, get his hair cut at the local barber and frequent the local shops in Chirnside.
Shy and modest away from the wheel, Clark also suffered from nerves and chewed his fingernails. Dr Bill Aitken, my uncle, was Clark's GP and friend. The party at the doctor's house to celebrate the winning of the world championship in 1963 underlined Clark's closeness to the world in which he grew up. He was part of a tight-knit rural community as well as being the fastest man on earth.
There were two stools beside the fireplace in the lounge of my uncle's house in Chirnside. At that party in 1963, the handsome young Grand Prix driver with dark hair and a flashing smile sat beside my mother and fidgeted during her gentle interrogation about girlfriends – there were many of them – before confiding that he had no intention of settling down and getting married as long as he was racing in Formula 1.
Whether Clark had a premonition or not about what lay in store for him five years later is hard to say. If motor racing is hardly the safest way to make a living in the 21st century, in the Sixties the sport was downright perilous. Drivers didn't wear seat-belts, safety precautions were minimal, and fatalities alarmingly common. Only a fool would have been blind to the dangers and Clark was nobody's fool.
Before he became world champion, Clark's Lotus had collided at Monza with Wolfgang Graf Berghe Von Trip's Ferrari. The German's car clipped Clark's wheel and soared into the crowd, killing the driver and 15 spectators. Shaken to the core, in the aftermath of the accident Clark thought seriously about retiring.
The party for a few friends in Chirnside followed the public celebration of his global success. Jim didn't like a fuss but understood the sense of pride in the local community. So he went along with the plan to parade the world championship trophy around Berwickshire on an open-top bus.
I was ten years old when I met Clark. He couldn't have been kinder or more generous with his time. He took me for a drive in his Lotus Cortina and introduced me to his family at Edington Mains farm. Then he drove me around the farm in a tractor. It was a never-to-be-forgotten experience for a lad to be chauffeured by the most fearlessly brilliant driver who ever lived.
I couldn't wait to get back to school and regale my classmates with tales of the wonderful day I'd spent with Scotland's world champion. I told them alright, but the story didn't have the desired effect. No one believed me. I was ridiculed as a fantasist.
After all, why would Jim Clark, one of the most dashing sporting heroes on the planet, spend time with a wee boy? Saying you'd be driven by Jim Clark in 1963 was like boasting you'd harmonised with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It was daft. Pull the other one.
What my peers didn't know was Clark was so unaffected by success – he loathed celebrity as much as he loved driving – that he was glad to give his Doctor's nephew a special day out.
"Jim was the kind of man who would do anything for a friend," Bill Aitken recalled.
"But he didn't have any time for the fame which surrounded his profession. He would rather have been with the sheep."
When Clark died, the village wanted to honour their favourite son with a memorial. At a meeting in the local hall, it was decided that "a plock" should be erected. A lady teacher from St Andrews, whose ears were more accustomed to deciphering received pronunciation than the Berwickshire vernacular, misheard the voice of the people and instead of a plaque, a clock was built.
The mistake, though, was apt, because the Chirnside memorial celebrates the life of a great Scot who sped faster than anyone else but whose time here was cut cruelly short. Forty years after Jim Clark's death, those of us fortunate enough to meet him remember every second.
The full article contains 819 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
