I'm Richard Porter. I'm Johnny Smith. And this is on the other side of things, the Smith and Sniff spin-off in which we answer your questions.

Well, here we are again. It's a Friday. Got some questions to answer. I'm going to start with quite a long one. Now this is actually from a front of us, Dan

Bevis, the editor of Copacetic magazine. Good old Dan. Hi, Dan. For whom I sometimes write. And

sweet, sweet guy Dan, has sent us a, well, it's a story with a question at the end and it starts

a note of sadness. Dan says my grandmother became very ill over Christmas and after clinging to life as

best she could in her typically tenacious way she passed away this week she'd made it to 98 years old, which is a frankly

ridiculous innings. And in her extremely long life, she enjoyed a short period of automotive

mayhem, which I thought may interest you. Grant, I love that. I'm in. Count me in. Yeah. You had me

at automotive mayhem.

Granny passed her driving test in 1998 at the age of 71. What? I know. This, of course,

pretty remarkable in itself, and it was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she passed her

test on her first go. She was a determined old thing and tended to tackle tasks head-on with failure not

considered an option.

It's a generational behaviour, I suspect.

Also, she was an orphan and an evacuee in World War II, and I think that early shake-up

of what's normal gives you a fairly forthright approach to life.

As was only proper for a septuagenarian in the 90s,

she bought herself a lovely new K-11 micro

from the local Glyn Hopkins dealership,

something that raised some wry smiles among family members.

Although I, at age 16 at a time,

was secretly rather impressed by its little twin cam stickers.

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