My name is Frits Schouten and I currently own three Minis. A Maroon 1975 Mini Clubman, a Yellow 1978 Mini Clubman and a Riley Elf. That is, if you want to class a Riley Elf as a Mini. Ha, ha.

How many years have I been a Mini enthusiast?  Um, not quit sure. If I say, “from the day I was born” I’m probably lying. I became a Mini addict probably when I met my now wife in 1975. There was this gorgeous blonde in this cute car, that caught my eye. I fell in love with the car there and then, but to get my hands on the car I had to befriend the driver….

My first car was an Opel Cadet, which I swapped for a Ford Escort Mk1 rather quickly.

I’ve had Minis since I met the blonde mentioned above. For a while the Mini got upgraded to a Maxi to cope with the expanding family and now we can afford more than one car, so the Mini came back in my life.

The Maroon Mini is my daily runner, the yellow Mini is my race car and the Riley Elf is my project car, which is still in bits. I got all the chrome bits for the Riley Elf, which is somewhat important.

The Family car is a good old run of the mill Toyota Station wagon strong enough to tow the racer.

I love doing Gymkhanas. Not that I’m good at it. No, not at all. It’s just a bit of honest fun on the lawn.

Racing around in the forest is, as always, giving me a real buzz. But as long as the trees don’t cross the road.

The one thing I would like to see happening with our club is to get involved with real racing. Whether it is on the track or in the forest really does not matter.  Organising open races for all front wheel drive cars under 1400cc would really top it off.