Will’s World: Red, blue or green – your vote matters

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an important vote coming up soon.

No doubt in these divided times it’ll fuel endless debate and discussion around which candidate to go for, and draw out experts of all kinds to offer their enlightened opinions.

In the end, as with all good democratic processes, we’ll have to make our own decisions and live with the consequences.

See also: Cast your vote to crown the best tractor of the past 90 years

Champion idea

Yes, I’m talking about Farmers Weekly’s search for the best tractor of the past 90 years, and I’m fascinated to see what ends up being crowned champion.

On first reading through the list of options, my instinct was to immediately cast my vote for what must surely be one of the hot favourites – the legendary Massey 135.

But when I considered it further, I decided that although it’s a wonderful tractor that I have great affection for – I drive one regularly on the farm to this day – it isn’t from my generation.

So on this occasion I’d go for the one that takes me back to my early teenage years, when the world seemed full of endless opportunities, summers were long and golden, and farmgate prices were always high.

In 1993, when I was 14 and spending most of my time either staring out of a window at school, thinking about girls that would never look twice at a hopeless nerd like me, or helping the old man out on the farm at every opportunity, we took delivery of our first ever four-wheel drive tractor – a brand-new Massey Ferguson 390T.

There are a handful of occasions that are among the happiest and most memorable of my life. The day that I married the present Mrs Evans, surrounded by our close friends and family.

The life-changing births of each of our numerous daughters, with the roller-coaster of joyous emotions that came along with them.

Wales knocking England out of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, and all the resulting riotous celebrations that followed.

Shiny new ride

Call me a sad case if you will, but the day that tractor arrived was right up there with the best of them, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was bought from the now long-gone Willis Brothers in Shrewsbury and manufactured at the similarly long-gone and much-lamented Banner Lane factory in Coventry.

I can picture it coming into the yard on the back of the truck now, and recall the dizzying sense of excitement and anticipation I felt on seeing it for the first time.

All gleaming red and grey paint, with sexily designed angles and that distinctive Hi-Line cab; registration number K359 AEP.

It had a whopping 92hp, four-cylinder Perkins turbo engine, a perspex air filter pre-cleaner rising out of the bonnet that gave it a wildly futuristic look, a 12-speed synchronised shuttle transmission, and, better than all that to a lad of my age: a radio with built-in cassette player. What more could anyone ask for?

Driving it, I felt like a young god.

The unfortunate thing is, much like the coming UK general election, where the candidate I’d most like to vote for doesn’t appear to exist, imagine my dismay on realising that my beloved 390T isn’t even listed among the many different voting choices.

Regrettably, it looks like I’ll have to abstain in protest. I might even scrawl rude words across the ballot paper too, just to further broadcast my displeasure.

Sort it out, will you, FW? Democracies have fallen over less.