Sorry, couldn't think of a thread title!
This year marked my first visit to the PC Resto show, where I was accompanied by my mum and sis. I will make a post later about how brilliant the show was/is, but what I am going to do here is share with you all an a-bridged version of my mum's car tales. Attending the show and seeing some of the vehicles there (in particular the mk1 Transit)brought back a lot of memories for my mum, as her dad (my dearest Grandad) used to drive them.
I was exceptionally close to my grandad, who sadly passed away (very much missed) before this show was launched as he would have loved it, I am also very close indeed to my mum (or so i assume!) and I think, among a great many things, I owe my love of cars, and certain cars in particular, to them. I mean what other little boy would call his little tykes car his Sierra :-P
any how mum's tales seemed quite quite popular, so I shall now press "copy and paste" and you may have a read! Oh ave a picture of the reprobate, and the van that triggered the walk down memory lane. and one of Grandad (and Nan) from the period for good measure.
"It was really easy to tell tales at the show standing next to my subjects but not so easy sitting at home, so I’ll start at the beginning…
Dad loved cars in fact the had a car before he had a home to call his own, an ancient Singer 9 held together with rust and bailer twine, next came a very handsome Rover of some sort HMX 500, if only that one was still here! Then a car I do remember, a grey Standard Vanguard… I stood on the roof and cracked the paintwork! He then got a modern car, a C reg Ford Cortina which made me extremely carsick, then joy of joys mum and dad bought a greengrocery shop and the glory days of sitting in a Ford Transit began.
I was never ill in our red machine, it doubled up as my gang of friends’ club headquarters in the summer, I think we truly believed that if we couldn’t be seen then no one could hear us! The van was C reg and the best-looking Transit, the mark 1, dad had to get up really early to drive off to Spitalfields market in east London three times a week and the van didn’t particularly like these cold early starts. I seem to remember he had to take the sparkplugs out and heat them up in an ancient gas oven, he also had a small paraffin heater that he placed under the engine to try and get it warm enough to start. My weekly treat (and what I actually lived for), was my visit to the local riding school, I’d go with my best friend but we didn’t sit up front that was far too boring, we’d sit on the wheel arches in the back and bounce and slide all the way there, we’d slide off sometimes too but that was even more fun. Another less than safe way of transport was saved for my nan, she had recently been widowed and liked to go out but we no longer had a car, just the three seater van… dad decided not to let this get in his way and put an old armchair in the back, he then lashed it down with yards of washing line and into this throne my 70 year old nan would proudly sit… and no my dad didn’t slow down at all, how nan stayed in place I really don’t know but I guess it was pure will power!
We had the van for years, its colour changed from bright red to dusky pink as it faded in the sunlight. It had sliding doors, maybe they all did, but dad enjoyed charging around with his door open, for some totally unknown reason he would take our Alsatian dog with him when he took deliveries out, Kim must have loved it… he stood behind dad, the wind would stream in through the open door and cover all the fresh food with his hair! It all came to an end when coming home even faster than usual, dad rounded a sharp bend and Kim flew out of the van and rolled across the road! Luckily, he was ok but dad was never allowed to take the dog out with him out again. Not long after this dad got his hands on a grey Jaguar of some sort 262 MMJ, he adored it, particularly the overdrive lever, I hated it as my carsickness returned but a least dad could go properly fast again. After the demise of the Jag, I don’t remember what dad did to it, came my favourite car of all time, ever, bar none… the Vauxhall Viscount, the first car that mum and dad named it was called Black Beauty and it was… CRO300F was its plate it died because dad couldn’t be bothered to check the car’s tyres, one blew and we ended up in a ditch. Nowadays the car would have been repaired but it was sadly pushed into lockup garage where it stayed for years until it was towed off to the hated scrapyard.
The pogo stick incident… like a lot of little girls I had a pogo stick, it wasn’t one of the really bouncy ones but I liked it, one day I got back from school to find my nice blue pogo stick being held by my dear father as he rummaged in his draw of ‘stuff’. He confessed that he was searching for a hacksaw to chop up my stick, seems he was about to drive off and the gearstick in the van had come off in his hand; he didn’t seem to get the fact that I wasn’t going to let him cut my stick up… he bodged the original stick up somehow, probably with the help of the infamous Kenny Baker (had all his teeth pulled out when he was 18, worked at the local scrap-yard and looked like a gnome).
One day the van decided not to start and as far as I knew it never started again as it ended up at the back of the shop until it simply vanished. It had been replaced by a bright yellow Mk 2 transit that we’d got from auction, there had been tons of them, all yellow and all ex GPO vans, goodness knows why we ended up with this particular van but it was a total star, it never put a tyre wrong and started every time without a fuss. I’d got some tins of even brighter yellow gloss paint and spent hours painting the poor thing with a brush, it was really streaky but we didn’t care. We had been having all our fresh food delivered for ages but dad needed a car so he bought a white Ford Consul Granada estate (to replace the beloved Viscount), it had once belonged to Len Tuckey, then husband of Suzy Quatro (awful racket, hated her). Anyway, we still had the yellow van and I started to learn to drive, in the white monster of course but I wanted a car of my own so dad swapped his van for a c reg rust bucket… a Ford Anglia, if only we had kept all these cars! I passed my test in ‘Robert’ filled in all the rust holes on the wing and painted them blue, the rest of the car was light green, any other rusty bits had bright orange flowers painted over. The fastest it ever went was 87 down the A12, everything that could shake did, so I decided that 70 was ok and kept to that speed, I sold it to a maths teacher who had wrecked his car and needed a temp. first day out he blew the engine… moron! (I bought a Citroen GS, really loved that car!)
The Consul was a cash and carry workhorse, I don’t think my dad was very fond of it as he neglected it (he was a muppet really)… this all came back to bite him when returning from Southend all sorts of warning lights came on, we got to the slip road off near Harold Wood and the poor thing screamed to a halt, dad had ruined its engine as he’d forgotten to check the oil. I can’t remember how we got home, I suspect Kenny Baker had something to do with it. My dad was pretty angry with himself over this and was delighted when Kenny told him he could get a ‘new’ engine for it but it had to be kept hush, hush? The scrapyard where Kenny worked was not perhaps unusual in that cars vanished there… a superfast Ford Capri had been stolen and hidden at the yard, it was then used in an armed robbery, taken back to the scrapyard where the engine was removed, put into our Consul and then completely destroyed. Dads Consul was quite probably one of the fasted estate cars around!
We had moved form the quiet of sleepy Chelmsford to Harold Hill, this was back in the late 1960’s the people who sold us the shop had told us that we’d need a guard dog, this advice was taken up on but I don’t think mum or dad had known why… we’d not moved in long when a man’s car broke down outside the shop… dad, despite the fact he neglected his own cars did actually know about them. Out dad dashed to help this stranded stranger, by all accounts he tried lots of things before resorting to his old trick of taking out the sparkplugs, heating them until warm and dry. Once back inside the car it started straightaway and the grateful owner drove off… there were many mutterings from the customers who’d seen this display of gallantry… it turned out that the stranger was strange only to dad, as he was in the higher league of villains. I can’t remember if it was the Krays or the Richardsons but this nice man was right up there, a right gangland mobster! But there was an unexpected upside to this, we were never asked for protection money, our shop was charmed and the sharp toothed (and soppy) Alsatian was never needed. There were a devil of a lot of Eastend crooks around but I never noticed anything amiss and felt totally safe everywhere, it was only in the late 1980’s when all the old firms had gone that things got nasty and we moved away.
I think the Consul rusted to bits and dad bought his first Ford Escort to replace it, even that is a classic now but it too rusted to bits until I managed to blow its engine going up the steep hill to see my horse at Havering-atte-Bower. Cars after this were never as fun except for my Fiat X1/9s of course but now my dad is gone and I drive really boring cars that in 40 years’ time will be classics themselves!"
hear's to you mum, nan and grandad. Memories, cars certainly old a lot of them, and long may they continue to do so.
This year marked my first visit to the PC Resto show, where I was accompanied by my mum and sis. I will make a post later about how brilliant the show was/is, but what I am going to do here is share with you all an a-bridged version of my mum's car tales. Attending the show and seeing some of the vehicles there (in particular the mk1 Transit)brought back a lot of memories for my mum, as her dad (my dearest Grandad) used to drive them.
I was exceptionally close to my grandad, who sadly passed away (very much missed) before this show was launched as he would have loved it, I am also very close indeed to my mum (or so i assume!) and I think, among a great many things, I owe my love of cars, and certain cars in particular, to them. I mean what other little boy would call his little tykes car his Sierra :-P
any how mum's tales seemed quite quite popular, so I shall now press "copy and paste" and you may have a read! Oh ave a picture of the reprobate, and the van that triggered the walk down memory lane. and one of Grandad (and Nan) from the period for good measure.
"It was really easy to tell tales at the show standing next to my subjects but not so easy sitting at home, so I’ll start at the beginning…
Dad loved cars in fact the had a car before he had a home to call his own, an ancient Singer 9 held together with rust and bailer twine, next came a very handsome Rover of some sort HMX 500, if only that one was still here! Then a car I do remember, a grey Standard Vanguard… I stood on the roof and cracked the paintwork! He then got a modern car, a C reg Ford Cortina which made me extremely carsick, then joy of joys mum and dad bought a greengrocery shop and the glory days of sitting in a Ford Transit began.
I was never ill in our red machine, it doubled up as my gang of friends’ club headquarters in the summer, I think we truly believed that if we couldn’t be seen then no one could hear us! The van was C reg and the best-looking Transit, the mark 1, dad had to get up really early to drive off to Spitalfields market in east London three times a week and the van didn’t particularly like these cold early starts. I seem to remember he had to take the sparkplugs out and heat them up in an ancient gas oven, he also had a small paraffin heater that he placed under the engine to try and get it warm enough to start. My weekly treat (and what I actually lived for), was my visit to the local riding school, I’d go with my best friend but we didn’t sit up front that was far too boring, we’d sit on the wheel arches in the back and bounce and slide all the way there, we’d slide off sometimes too but that was even more fun. Another less than safe way of transport was saved for my nan, she had recently been widowed and liked to go out but we no longer had a car, just the three seater van… dad decided not to let this get in his way and put an old armchair in the back, he then lashed it down with yards of washing line and into this throne my 70 year old nan would proudly sit… and no my dad didn’t slow down at all, how nan stayed in place I really don’t know but I guess it was pure will power!
We had the van for years, its colour changed from bright red to dusky pink as it faded in the sunlight. It had sliding doors, maybe they all did, but dad enjoyed charging around with his door open, for some totally unknown reason he would take our Alsatian dog with him when he took deliveries out, Kim must have loved it… he stood behind dad, the wind would stream in through the open door and cover all the fresh food with his hair! It all came to an end when coming home even faster than usual, dad rounded a sharp bend and Kim flew out of the van and rolled across the road! Luckily, he was ok but dad was never allowed to take the dog out with him out again. Not long after this dad got his hands on a grey Jaguar of some sort 262 MMJ, he adored it, particularly the overdrive lever, I hated it as my carsickness returned but a least dad could go properly fast again. After the demise of the Jag, I don’t remember what dad did to it, came my favourite car of all time, ever, bar none… the Vauxhall Viscount, the first car that mum and dad named it was called Black Beauty and it was… CRO300F was its plate it died because dad couldn’t be bothered to check the car’s tyres, one blew and we ended up in a ditch. Nowadays the car would have been repaired but it was sadly pushed into lockup garage where it stayed for years until it was towed off to the hated scrapyard.
The pogo stick incident… like a lot of little girls I had a pogo stick, it wasn’t one of the really bouncy ones but I liked it, one day I got back from school to find my nice blue pogo stick being held by my dear father as he rummaged in his draw of ‘stuff’. He confessed that he was searching for a hacksaw to chop up my stick, seems he was about to drive off and the gearstick in the van had come off in his hand; he didn’t seem to get the fact that I wasn’t going to let him cut my stick up… he bodged the original stick up somehow, probably with the help of the infamous Kenny Baker (had all his teeth pulled out when he was 18, worked at the local scrap-yard and looked like a gnome).
One day the van decided not to start and as far as I knew it never started again as it ended up at the back of the shop until it simply vanished. It had been replaced by a bright yellow Mk 2 transit that we’d got from auction, there had been tons of them, all yellow and all ex GPO vans, goodness knows why we ended up with this particular van but it was a total star, it never put a tyre wrong and started every time without a fuss. I’d got some tins of even brighter yellow gloss paint and spent hours painting the poor thing with a brush, it was really streaky but we didn’t care. We had been having all our fresh food delivered for ages but dad needed a car so he bought a white Ford Consul Granada estate (to replace the beloved Viscount), it had once belonged to Len Tuckey, then husband of Suzy Quatro (awful racket, hated her). Anyway, we still had the yellow van and I started to learn to drive, in the white monster of course but I wanted a car of my own so dad swapped his van for a c reg rust bucket… a Ford Anglia, if only we had kept all these cars! I passed my test in ‘Robert’ filled in all the rust holes on the wing and painted them blue, the rest of the car was light green, any other rusty bits had bright orange flowers painted over. The fastest it ever went was 87 down the A12, everything that could shake did, so I decided that 70 was ok and kept to that speed, I sold it to a maths teacher who had wrecked his car and needed a temp. first day out he blew the engine… moron! (I bought a Citroen GS, really loved that car!)
The Consul was a cash and carry workhorse, I don’t think my dad was very fond of it as he neglected it (he was a muppet really)… this all came back to bite him when returning from Southend all sorts of warning lights came on, we got to the slip road off near Harold Wood and the poor thing screamed to a halt, dad had ruined its engine as he’d forgotten to check the oil. I can’t remember how we got home, I suspect Kenny Baker had something to do with it. My dad was pretty angry with himself over this and was delighted when Kenny told him he could get a ‘new’ engine for it but it had to be kept hush, hush? The scrapyard where Kenny worked was not perhaps unusual in that cars vanished there… a superfast Ford Capri had been stolen and hidden at the yard, it was then used in an armed robbery, taken back to the scrapyard where the engine was removed, put into our Consul and then completely destroyed. Dads Consul was quite probably one of the fasted estate cars around!
We had moved form the quiet of sleepy Chelmsford to Harold Hill, this was back in the late 1960’s the people who sold us the shop had told us that we’d need a guard dog, this advice was taken up on but I don’t think mum or dad had known why… we’d not moved in long when a man’s car broke down outside the shop… dad, despite the fact he neglected his own cars did actually know about them. Out dad dashed to help this stranded stranger, by all accounts he tried lots of things before resorting to his old trick of taking out the sparkplugs, heating them until warm and dry. Once back inside the car it started straightaway and the grateful owner drove off… there were many mutterings from the customers who’d seen this display of gallantry… it turned out that the stranger was strange only to dad, as he was in the higher league of villains. I can’t remember if it was the Krays or the Richardsons but this nice man was right up there, a right gangland mobster! But there was an unexpected upside to this, we were never asked for protection money, our shop was charmed and the sharp toothed (and soppy) Alsatian was never needed. There were a devil of a lot of Eastend crooks around but I never noticed anything amiss and felt totally safe everywhere, it was only in the late 1980’s when all the old firms had gone that things got nasty and we moved away.
I think the Consul rusted to bits and dad bought his first Ford Escort to replace it, even that is a classic now but it too rusted to bits until I managed to blow its engine going up the steep hill to see my horse at Havering-atte-Bower. Cars after this were never as fun except for my Fiat X1/9s of course but now my dad is gone and I drive really boring cars that in 40 years’ time will be classics themselves!"
hear's to you mum, nan and grandad. Memories, cars certainly old a lot of them, and long may they continue to do so.
