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CHAPTER 2

MY DAD AND CARS

In the 1970s, on every council estate, men were to be found under cars. It seemed to me that being an adult man meant you needed to be fixing something, and my dad was constantly fixing something for which he wasn’t qualified. Because he would never give up till what he was mending actually worked, he usually managed to get things to work in such a way that nobody else on the planet was ever able to repair them again, as nobody knew what he had done. Most of the time my dad didn’t know, either.

This was always best illustrated by the range of cars we had. Money was tight, but cars were a necessary luxury, so my dad bought what he could afford, then spent time underneath it trying to make it do what he needed it to.

One car that stands out for me was the Hillman Imp. The name does not inspire much confidence – any name that is one letter away from ‘limp’ is surely not a title to give something that is supposed to transport people around. The Hillman Imp was developed by the Rootes Group to make a small car for the mass market. The fact that most of you will have not heard of either the car or the company tells you all you need to know about its success.

The car had its engine in the back, which would be absolutely fine if you couldn’t smell its workings whilst sitting there. The front bonnet was for storage. If you packed to go on holiday, this had the effect of turning any luggage you put there into a sort of early prototype airbag of clothes and knickers, should you have the misfortune to have a head-on collision. Whereas, if you were hit in the rear, a steaming engine would smack you on the back of the head, forcing you through the windscreen because, as it was still the seventies, nobody wore seat belts.

I recall a conversation with my dad about seat belts and the fact that he never wore one. His rationale was that if you ever drove into a river, the seat belt was another thing you had to deal with before climbing out the car, and that delay could be vital. He was also of the firm belief that if you rolled down a hill, there was always a chance that the belt could trap you in the car when the best thing to do would be to open the door and allow yourself to be thrown free. Needless to say, none of these theories has ever been tested and my dad now does wear a seat belt, but amongst the various jobs he has had in his life, safety officer was never one of them.

Our Hillman Imp was grey with an off-white roof – the best way to describe it is as something smaller than a single bed and less attractive than your average washing machine. And the reason that it stands out in my memory amongst all the other cars my dad had was because of one camping holiday we took in the Welsh hills when I was eight. The tent and various pieces of luggage were housed on the roof of the car as the bonnet was filled with clothes and tins of food: my mum was convinced that the camp shops would over-charge, so instead of being ripped off for tins of beans, soup and corned beef, she had stocked up and loaded the car. The fact that all this extra weight probably slowed us down to the point that we were using more petrol never entered the equation. There was no way she was going to allow anyone to rip us off.

My mum and dad sat in the front of the car, of course, while in the rear was me, 8; Carol, 9; Kathy, 12; Eddie, 13; and Lassie, 35 in dog years. Lassie was a white mongrel that I can’t ever remember not having as a child. She was white all over, apart from a black patch on her eye. Every time someone new met her, they would immediately say, ‘That’s a nice dog – is she called Patch?’ to which we would reply, ‘Don’t be stupid. She’s called Lassie,’ as if it wasn’t obvious enough.

She was a brilliant dog who would dance on her hind legs for biscuits, allow you to dress her up in girls’ clothes for a laugh, and was not a bad footballer. I am not joking about the latter point: Lassie could play. She wasn’t one of those dogs that would see a ball and then want to bite it. No, Lassie would join in by using her nose to win the ball, and then, once directed towards the goal, would keep nosing the ball till she had dribbled past everyone and scored. Because she had more legs than anyone else on the field, she was faster than any of the other players, so she was very good at dribbling. The only problem was that she was not really much good at anything else, and if she did score she didn’t have the awareness to stop, and would carry on running all over the estate, still nosing the ball, unless she became distracted by food or a cat. Also, her distribution was rubbish, so we never let her play with us too often. There is nothing worse than a greedy player, even if they are a dog.

So that was four kids and a dog on the back seat; two adults in the front; a six-berth tent along with deck chairs and a table on the roof; and in the bonnet we had clothes, sleeping bags, tins of food and the camping stove with bottled gas. All of this in a car under which my dad had spent hours making sure things like the brakes actually worked when requested to, rather than when they liked.

I cannot possibly imagine embarking on such a trip now. My kids have been brought up with rear-seat TVs and iPads: at the very least, they put in earphones, listen to music and get lost in their own world. They’ve never travelled for hours on holiday in an overcrowded car to one of the wettest countries in the world, where you are camping in a borrowed tent which, when you get there, takes all night to put up as there are no instructions.

We had to cram into the car, with me by the window due to my propensity to throw up every ten miles of any car journey, let alone one where engine fumes were mixing with those of dog farts. I was often given barley-sugar sweets, which were supposed to help car sickness, although how eating something that tasted of sick mixed with sugar was supposed to stop you from being sick I have never understood.

In all the excitement, we never worried about the potential dangers of being in a car that had dodgy brakes and was massively overloaded with tinned food housed under the bonnet next to gas canisters – therefore having all the potential to turn into a dirty bomb at the moment of impact. We were going on holiday and, as my mum and dad played their favourite country and western songs, we prepared to go to the only foreign country I ever visited until I reached adulthood: Wales.

The holiday was great. My memory of it was of sunshine and the beauty of Bala Lake, albeit strangely mixed with the dread of any approaching hill. Early on in the journey it became clear that, despite its name suggesting it was ‘a man of the hill’, the Hillman would not be able to carry us up any slope of substance, while perhaps the ‘Imp’ part of its name was just the start of the word ‘impossible’, because that was what every hill became.

Once we approached the periphery of Snowdonia National Park my dad knew that if we were to stand any chance of ever reaching our destination the weight in the car would have to be reduced. This meant that on the approach to any hill we would all climb out and, along with the dog, begin the long walk up whilst my dad slowly drove the Hillman Imp to the apex. There he would wait for us all to arrive. That said, he didn’t always get there first: on more than one occasion we walked faster than he could make the car go.

There is nothing more humbling than seeing your dad at the front of a procession of cars, willing his own vehicle onwards, while you arrive at the top of the hill faster than him by walking. The frustration of those caught up in the procession was matched only by our collective desire for the Imp to make it to the top. Failure to do so would only result in the embarrassment of being forced to do a three-point turn in an over-laden car in the middle of an ascent, and start again.

When we had all reconvened at a peak, we quickly reassumed our positions in the car and would be rewarded for our efforts by a trip downhill at as much speed as the Hillman Imp could muster. It was like being in a toboggan as we weaved around the bends, until the gradient changed and we all had to get out and start walking again.

One little-known fact about my dad is that he invented the people carrier. Although his version may, by today’s standards, seem rather primitive, he certainly has to be credited with the concept of taking a van and putting people in it.

After the Imp limped to an early grave, it was a red Ford Escort van that my dad brought home next. The fact that it had no seats in the back never struck us as strange; we had owned vans in the past and all we did as kids was climb in the back and sit on a few cushions.

It seems a successful way to travel until you travel with the childhood version of myself, one whose propensity for car sickness was not helped by such a mode of transport. Being in the back of a van with no windows and a vomiting child is not really the place you want to be.

I don’t know if it was the car sickness or just a wave of inspiration, but my dad then decided that he did not want a Ford Escort van. He wanted a family car, and for that to happen he either had to buy a new car or change the one he had, the latter being the most sensible thing due to our lack of money.

Using an angle grinder, my dad proceeded to cut into the side panels of the van. Even in a road where people working on cars was not an unusual sight, the image of a man with an angle grinder attacking his own car so that sparks were filling the air created a fair amount of interest. After all, in a world of only three television channels something as crazy as this was bound to create a lot of interest. Oblivious, my dad just carried on. He was like Noah building his Ark: my dad had a vision, and even if the rest of the world, including my mum, thought he had lost the plot, he was still going to realise that vision.

Once the side panels came out, my dad then produced some windows that he had ‘found’ in a caravan. I have written ‘found’ in inverted commas because when I recently spoke to him about putting the glass in to replace the side panels he wanted to put me straight right away. Glass would have been dangerous (I never thought I would hear my dad say anything was dangerous when it came to cars), and what he had, in fact, put into the side panels was Perspex, which he had taken from a caravan.

‘A caravan?’ my mum asked. ‘What caravan?’

‘A caravan I found,’ said my dad, and that was the end of that.

As you can imagine, your average caravan window is not made to fit exactly into the shape left behind in a Ford Escort van after the side panels have been removed. So, with the aid of welding and tape, they were customised to the space and made to fit. A seat was added in the back from another car of a similar size found in a scrap yard and, after this was bolted to the floor, my dad stepped back. The people carrier had been invented, although it was probably the most illegal vehicle I have ever ridden in.

The car must have been uninsurable and, by today’s standards, it was a million miles from being roadworthy. We used to climb into it either over the seats at the front or from the rear door, which was designed for loading goods, not children. Whoever failed to get on the rear seat then had to sit in the vestibule area between the newly installed seat and the rear door. Occasionally the rear door would spring open whilst in transit, but not too often, and no kids were lost during the time that we had the car.

I loved that car, and I was sad to see it go. People would look at us whenever we were out in it and, in my mind, that just helped to enhance the magic of it. I never for one second thought the car was being looked at for any other reason than admiration. But, as Christmas approached in 1975, my dad decided it was time to sell his creation. No doubt the pressing matter of getting us kids presents played some part in that decision.

Christmas passed and my dad still had the car, which meant all his money was gone. Then he received a call from a traveller camp on the edge of Winsford.

My dad drove the car to the camp and haggled with the assembled men. It was New Year’s Eve. If he could sell the car, he and my mum could have a rare night out. The deal was struck and the car was sold. After the cash was handed over, my dad asked the inevitable question, ‘How do I get home from here?’ The camp was a fair distance from home and none of his friends was able to pick him up. Getting a taxi to come to a traveller camp was never an easy thing to do, so he asked the man to whom he had just sold the car to give him a lift home in it.

The man shook his head. ‘I’m not driving that till I’ve painted it, but I’ll give you a lift on that.’

He pointed to a Triumph motorbike. There are few things that my dad hates more than motorbikes, but with cash in his pocket and a do to get to, he took the offer and rode home pillion, clinging tight to the driver and with a smile on his face.

The effect of that car didn’t end after it was sold, because my dad used the money to take Eddie and me to the cinema for the first time ever. The film was Jaws, and we went because it was deemed too scary for the girls. I know, but it was 1975 and they probably had things to do in the kitchen.

I could not have been happier. I felt like we had won the pools. I was at a cinema watching the first film I had ever seen that wasn’t a Western. The cinema was in Northwich, a town about eight miles away from Winsford, and the fact that it was somewhere new only added to the excitement of the evening. I loved it when it was just us ‘boys’ together: I saw it as an opportunity to talk to the other men of the tribe about man-stuff like football, cars, conkers – things the girls in the family just wouldn’t understand. This time usually came on a Sunday afternoon, when we would sit in the living room eating our roast dinner watching the weekly Granada football highlights show called Kick Off, which Gerald Sinstadt commentated. It was required viewing for anyone who wanted to watch football whilst eating a Sunday roast and, as Gerald Sinstadt presented it for years, there is a whole generation of men who can’t help salivating as soon as they hear his voice.

I know at times my desire to use these sacred moments for conversation did mean that I became slightly irritating to Eddie and my dad, who had the serious business of football and food to concentrate upon, so a trip out to the cinema was a male bonding experience on a totally different level. I am sure I jabbered away in the car my dad had borrowed for the evening but, once inside the cinema, popcorn in hand, I was just enchanted by the experience, and any notion of bonding over conversation disappeared within seconds.

The film was brilliant, although it did have serious implications for my swimming in the sea for the rest of my life. Like many people, I cannot now put my head under water without hearing, ‘Durum, durum, durum.’ However, I had been introduced to the world of cinema, a world I love to this day. One of my favourite things is going to watch films in the day. I am 46, but it still makes me feel like I am skiving school.

The best car my dad ever had was the Moscovitch. This was a Russian car that embodied the Soviet Union prior to the Wall coming down. It was red for a start, although I am sure you could get different colours. Having said that, I never saw anyone else driving one, except my dad. It was square. Very square. The kind of square you see when a child tries to draw a car, and in all honesty I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that the car was designed by a six-year-old.

In 1970s Russia, passenger comfort obviously was not a priority: if you were not in your Moscovitch, what else would you be doing? Standing in a bread line dreaming about Levi’s jeans, probably. Everything about the car screamed function before purpose, the driver console being unattractive and full of things that could impale you in a collision, but I loved that car. I loved how solid it felt, which may in part be due to the tank metal it was made of. I loved that it was from the exotic Eastern Bloc that we were supposed to be scared of, but which I deduced could not be that bad if they had sold my dad a car. The car lacked mechanical sophistication to such an extent that when my dad lost the keys he began using a pair of scissors in the ignition to start the car. I actually thought my dad might be a Russian spy when he got it, and I allowed some of my mates to think the same.

But I mostly loved it because my dad did. One thing he appreciated the most was the lighter just below the dash-board, which you could press in and which would pop out when it was hot enough for my dad to light his cigarette as he drove. It was the most sophisticated thing I had ever seen. And I broke it.

Whilst sitting in the car waiting for my dad one day in Garston, Liverpool, I couldn’t resist pressing the lighter in. When it popped out, I decided to test how hot it was with the tip of my tongue. Yes, I did just write that. The tip of my tongue. You do not need to be medically qualified to guess the result. I burnt my tongue and it hurt like hell. But, after the initial pain, I was still sitting in the car with nothing to do, so I kept on pushing the lighter in and out until one time when it didn’t pop out again.

My dad returned to the car and immediately went to use the lighter. When it didn’t move, he used his strength to pull it. The internal coil unravelled and the lighter fell apart.

‘Have you been using this?’ my dad asked.

I tried to explain it wasn’t my fault, but due to the burnt tongue I just said, ‘Ummn dun nooo.’

My dad looked at me, and I knew that he knew I had broken it. He looked me in the eye for a moment, sighed and simply said, ‘I liked that lighter.’

Then we drove home. I loved that car because it always reminded me of my dad’s forgiveness and that ‘things’ don’t matter. People do. Even if those people can’t talk due to their own stupidity.