THE FAMILY CAR
One day last year outside a café in Cornwall, I noticed a rare car identical to the one my father owned back in the never-had-it-so-good days. It brought back so many memories, I would have liked to speak to the driver but he or she never appeared.When I was a child, using public transport was very restrictive when going on holiday or out for the day. Long train journeys were tedious – waiting on platforms with heavy suitcases seemed to take all day – so in 1957 my father decided to learn to drive. After a few lessons in a Morris Minor he bought a brand new Ford Anglia 100e de luxe finished in Warwick Green, registration number: UUC 512. As he was yet to pass his test, he took my uncle with him to Hubert Dees in Sidcup in order to drive it home. How proud he was to drive it out of the showroom and into our lives!
My father took the remainder of his lessons in it and I remember riding my fairy bike up and down the road, watching him while he practised his three-point turns. I don’t think he was too pleased to have an audience and waved me away on more than one occasion.
As we didn’t have a garage, my father rented one in a block located in a nearby road. He kept the Anglia in immaculate condition, even leathering it off before putting it away whenever it had been raining. In the winter, he ‘put it to bed’ with an old eiderdown tucked over the engine (under the bonnet) and a little paraffin heater underneath the car to keep it warm. All the time he owned the car he religiously took it to Hubert Dees for servicing, nowhere else would do.
My father began in earnest to master the manoeuvres and asked my uncle to go with him at every available opportunity to rehearse his hill-starts and three-point turns. I would always ask to go along for the ride; at eight years old, I found it all very exciting and jumped at the chance of a car journey, no matter how mundane. Even going to a garage to fill up with petrol was a treat. There were no self-service filling stations in those days and my father always asked the attendant for ‘Three and three shots, please.’ This meant three gallons of petrol and three shots of Redex which was supposed to make the engine run smoother.
One evening after our outing, my father stalled the engine as he attempted to drive the car into the garage. There was a deafening noise that went on and on when he tried to restart the engine. My uncle tried to rectify the problem but I ran home, crying all the way; I thought something terrible had gone wrong with the car. I later learned that the starter motor had got jammed. My father joined the Automobile Association after that and proudly displayed the yellow and chrome badge on the grill. In those days, the AA patrols used motorbikes with yellow and black livery and the patrolmen had grey uniforms and always saluted members on the road; we felt very special.
All the long hours of practice paid off when my father passed his test first time. From then on the whole family piled into UUC 512 at weekends to visit the Kent coastand countryside. Westgate-on-Sea was our favourite seaside resort and places such as Penshurst Place, Ightham Mote and Knoll Park were among the stately homes we enjoyed. I loved being on the move and ‘drinking in the scenery,’ as my father put it, and was always reluctant to come home. We all enjoyed the freedom of the open road, and especially the novelty of the first motorway in Kent in 1960 – the first stage of the M20 which was then known as the Maidstone by-pass. I became interested in the different makes and models of cars on the road and enjoyed picking them out and discussing them with my father. Our favourites were the new Fords with their modern styling – the larger Consul, Zephyr and Zodiac and the smaller Prefect and Popular which were a variation on the Anglia. Then in 1961 came the revolutionary new Anglia 105e saloon with its back-slanted rear window which, I remember, caused quite a stir. But my father was perfectly happy with his unusual colour Anglia and never traded it in for a newer model.
Working in the West-End meant my father only used the car at weekends, so he suggested my mother learned to drive. She passed her test on the second attempt in 1966 and the use of the car revolutionised her shopping trips. Then at age seventeen it was my turn to learn. If my father had had a crystal ball, he would never have allowed me to drive his precious Anglia. Three weeks after I passed my test I had an accident and wrote it off. I had been out with a friend during the day and coming home, tried to turn right onto the A2 on a dark, wet February night. I misjudged the speed of the traffic coming from the right and a white Anglia van collided with us, ripped the driver’s door off and spun the car round, and I ended up in West Hill hospital in Dartford. Initially of course, my father was far more worried about me than the car, but when I had recovered he mourned the loss of his pride and joy. He went to see it on the scrap heap (for insurance
purposes) and came back to tell me it was still shining like a new pin. It was ten years old but only had 30,000 miles on the clock. He had subsequent, second-hand cars after this but none meant as much as his Anglia.
So, you can understand what a strange feeling it was for me to witness this Warwick Green Ford Anglia, incongruously parked outside a café in Charlestown, where my husband and I sat with our family enjoying our afternoon tea! It was almost as if my father’s car had been resurrected and come back to haunt me; I had to make sure the registration plate wasn’t UUC 512.
Copyright Julie Newman 2011
Julie is brilliant at these evocative pieces and had had success with several being accepted for publication
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