It's a strange feeling when you have to move.

It's an even stranger feeling when you've been settled in one place for a while, and then you have to move.

And then it starts to get seriously weird when you've been settled in one place for a while, you have to move, and you move back to the place that you came from originally.

In one of the worst bits of timing that I have ever suffered, I have recently moved from one city in Australia to another. I moved from Adelaide to Canberra in August of 1984. In a sublime piece of timing, and with great irony, I have just moved back to Adelaide from Canberra, with no intervening moves. Ironical just isn't in it. I left Adelaide the year before the GP came to town ... and I moved back to Adelaide the year after the GP left town!

The human race is incredibly mobile, and that's even with us being restricted just to our planet, and with a goodly proportion of the population basically being unable to move as and when they want. Yet still we move all over the place all the time, as can be seen by all the cars, buses, taxis, ships and planes that spend their time doing the transporting.

In a way, I suppose we like change. We always think that the "grass will be greener on the other side of the fence" - even if that fence happens to be 1000 kilometres or more wide, as it was in my case. (Why did I move? Well, it's not really relevant to the argument, and it's also none of your business.)

While the human race likes to move around a fair bit, it also likes to move things around a fair bit too and change them. Quite often an office building is vacated and demolished ... only for another office building to arise in its place (I'm going to avoid any refences to phoenixes). In many cases, it's because the building has become out-dated and the owners can't get as much rent for it as they would like. So they upgrade the building, raise the rent and get a return on their investment.

But, it was basically the public that forced the owners into that fairly drastic course of action. For some reason, that building fell out of favour. It may have been that there were other, newer, cheaper and better buildings available with more public appeal.

The F1 circus is going through some moves of its own at present. This year, 1996, sees the Australian GP move from Adelaide back to Melbourne. The public and private reasons for this have never really been explained. To listen to Bernie Ecclestone, boss of FOCA and a Vice-President of the FIA, it mainly had to do with the fact that a certain politician was no longer in power in Adelaide's home state of South Australia.

[For those among you who would like to pick holes, before you blast off some e-mail to me about my comment in the above paragraph that "the Australian GP move from Adelaide back to Melbourne", please note that the Australian GP was held in Melbourne for many years - but it was not an F1 event at the time. I made no mention of F1 in that particular context ... but only just!]

Frankly, that answer raises more questions than it answers. Adelaide certainly put on a good show for F1. F1 was, realistically, Adelaide's only populist show. Why the absence of a certain politician should really make any difference to the holding of an F1 GP seems a little beyond the pale. After all, Adelaide needed the GP. And Adelaide had made the Australian GP, so why move the race to Melbourne?

And then, recently, the French national motor racing body, the French Motorsports Federation (FFSA), announced that the French F1 GP would be moving from the Magny-Cours circuit back to Le Castellet circuit.

This seems a strange move. Not so much because of the move itself, although it is fascinating, but the way in which the matter was anounced - and it makes for a very interesting comparison with the announcement of the move of the Australian GP.

For the French GP, the FFSA made the anouncement. For the Australian GP, Bernie Ecclestone made the announcement. For one GP, it was (on the surface, at least) purely an internal decision. For the GP, it was an international decision. Why?

Of course, there is the question of history. France has had an F1 GP since the dawn of time (somewhere around 1950). On the other hand, Australia has had an F1 GP only since 1985. So perhaps there was a measure of "respect" in allowing the FFSA to make not only the announcement but also, apparently, the decision.

Whatever the method of announcing these changes, there was little doubt in parts of the Australian media that money was the prime motive behind the move from Adelaide to Melbourne. To be precise, it seemed more (MUCH more) money into Bernie Ecclestone's pocket.

So, perhaps, the move from Magny-Cours to Le Castellet was also motivated by money? Perhaps there wasn't quite the same "rake-off" going to to certain parties, but perhaps certain other parties would be getting a bigger slice of the pie.

And that's the way it all seemed.

But then the plot thickened. Just before the season started, it was announced that the French GP would be staying at Magny-Cours after all, at least until 1999. You see, the FFSA hadn't been aware that Bernie Ecclestone ... oops, sorry ... FOCA had been negotiating with the circuit. And the circuit hadn't been able to come up with the necessary financial arrangements.

The plot hadn't thickened, it had gelled. Perhaps, after all, it makes no difference whether you're an long-established part of the F1 circuit or a newcomer; whatever happens, money (and FOCA) rule.

But that's just me.