Memories Of Cars

Strapping Tom safely into his car seat this morning triggered a whole lot of memories of the various car journeys I made as a child with my grandfather. My mum and dad have never owned a car though my dad got his license in his early twenties – instead if a car was necessary for a family holiday they would merely rent one.

My grandfather, however, got his license just after the war – on the second attempt. He failed the first test for being cheeky. As they drove up a steep hill the instructor apparently asked my grandfather what he would do when he reached the top – obviously expecting a technical answer to do with gear changes and the accelerator. My grandfather merely laughed and said he’d continue over the top and go down the other side until he reached the bottom.

That got him a big fat cross and a fail.

The second test he restrained his naughty streak and passed. From that point on, until he reached his eighties, he was never without a car. Hence most of the car journeys I experienced as a child were in his company and in his car.

Now every time we strap Tom into the backseat and nag Ben to put on his seatbelt I am always reminded of how, when my sister and I were of a similar age, we would ride quite happily and quite acceptably in the back of my grandfather’s car without seatbelts. I even recall one occasion when – as a treat – my grandfather let us both stand on the front passenger seat with our hands on the dashboard. This was wonderful as a small child to be able to see properly out of the windscreen as we drove along. Somehow I don’t think there are many children who experience such things now.

Countless times we would lie down on the backseat on long journeys and fall asleep under a “car blanket”. I even made the entire journey to Weston-super-Mare once lying down in the back of my grandfather’s old estate car, snuggled up to my grandparent’s huge Labrador, Kim, while my sisters and the grown-ups were all crushed up in the backseats and the front passenger seat. We didn’t think anything of it. It was normal.

And yet there is no way I’d allow Ben or Tom to do such a thing now. Health & Safety has encroached onto the Western consciousness like a new religion and we all of us, at least once a day, pray to it in some way or other.

My strongest memory of being in a car with my grandfather was when he would drive us around seeing various aunts and uncles and performing various errands on a Sunday morning before we’d go and spend the day with my Nan. One regular errand involved my grandfather sneaking into his work depot to secretly use their car washing facilities. He’d allow us to poke around the musty offices, help ourselves to notebooks and occasionally play with the telephones (old Seventies dial ones). One Sunday though, for some reason or other he made my sister and I wait in the car while he went off to do something. He would be “right back”.

I guess as a small child – and we couldn’t have been any more than 5 or 6 – time passes much more slowly than it does for an adult. It felt like he’d been gone for hours. We began to panic. Maybe he wasn’t coming back (God knows why we thought such a thing)? He’d forgotten about us or got lost. In the end, being the eldest, I decided we should climb out of the window and go and find him. My sister was up for this and the pair of us clambered from the back to the front of the car. We couldn’t, however, work out how to unlock the doors. My sister had a brainwave – a good one for a 5 year old – and wound down the driver’s side window. She managed to clamber out and drop down to the ground. I got halfway out when I heard my sister shout. My grandfather had reappeared. The last image I have of this memory is of my sister running towards him, her skirt flapping in the wind, as my grandfather jogged towards us asking in a loud voice what the hell we were doing.

I don’t recall being told off or getting into trouble. I just remember being relieved to see him and feeling safe.

And now forty years later, even with all the seatbelts and air bags and the Health & Safety procedures that litter our lives, I can’t say that I’ve ever feel as safe as I did that day when he walked so exasperatedly back towards us.

Seatbelts are essential and legally correct – I know this – but love is what made me feel safe.

I hope one day Ben and Tom will realize this too for all they may protest now at being “restrained”.

Making New Cheese Out Of Old Cheese

I don’t believe it.

They’re bringing back Knight Rider.

Re-made, re-cast and possibly retro-fitted, Michael Knight and his camp Kit car are already gearing up to turbo-boost back onto our TV screens sometime this Autumn.

And I feel nothing but dismay.

Some things are just best left alone.

Most of the TV shows from the eighties being a case in point.

Although I have fond memories of Knight Rider, The A-Team and Airwolf et al, they are time-locked into a small, blessedly sealed, period of my teenage years and that is where I’d prefer them to remain.

My teenage years weren’t great. I was shy, geeky and nerdy and not particularly a success with the ladies. I lived most of the time in my head, my imagination fuelled by the shows above, my morals and political outlook to a degree informed by the heroes who machine gunned their way to justice and democracy for all. In my innocence I bought unthinkingly into the American way.

Yes folks. I wanted to be Michael Knight. I wanted to be David Hasselhoff.

Oh the shame. And I’d rather not have to relive it.

Well, to be honest, I never wanted to actually be Michael / David. But I did covet the car. I coveted the car in a big way. Yes, I wanted a car that looked butch but was, at heart, gay... Though that gayness is only apparent in retrospect. At the time it wasn’t so obvious. Kit was, well, just Kit. Just as C3PO was just C3PO (and not a metallic version of Charles Hawtrey – which he plainly is).

Looking back on it it’s plain to see why I was such a messed up teen.

But that aside, I’m just sick of this regurgitation of the eighties. It’s lazy. Nostalgia is nice when it is infrequent but not as a permanent mindset. And nostalgia certainly isn’t an art form worth spending money on.

But plainly I’m wrong.

Some TV money man somewhere obviously feels Knight Rider is good for a few bucks more. So they’re wheeling it back out of the scrap yard only this time without the Hoff.

Which surely is a bit like having The A-Team without Mr T?

Or Star Trek without Shatner?

Er...

OK.

That last point wasn’t argued so well but even so...

It’s just not going to be the same. It’s like – having mentioned Hawtrey above – trying to remake the Carry On films. It cannot be done. Sure you can emulate all the physical / visible ingredients. But what you can’t recreate is the original time frame. Nostalgia just cannot be contemporized.

Now, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe they will inject a whole new ethos into it. New blood into old wine skins, etc, or whatever the saying is. But why bother when you can buy the originals of every bloody series from the eighties on Amazon?

I mean, can people not write anything new anymore?

What are they going to remake next?

Street Hawk (remember that anyone)?

Whizz Kids (anybody)?

CHiPs?

Geez. CHiPs. Please, please don’t get me started on Eric Estrada...

Mugged By Kindness

This is probably evidence – not that any is needed – that I am a true curmudgeon.

Picture this: I’m walking home. I need to cross a road. I pause at the kerb as I can see out of the corner of my right eye that as car is waiting to turn left across my field of progress.

Yes. I really do have a “field of progress”.

Now, rather sanely, I decide to halt forward momentum at this point. I don’t want to get into physical intimacy with a metallic object that is travelling at 20mph. Besides which he has a right of way.

The Green Cross Code Man and Tufty the squirrel would both be applauding me at this point. I’ve done the right thing, you see. All those road safety lessons as a child have paid off.

The driver however brings his vehicle to a halt and rather insistently waves me across.

I obey but instinctively feel aggrieved and annoyed. It isn’t right, you see.

The road was completely empty behind him so there was absolutely no reason for him to make a point of stopping on my account. Another two seconds and I could have crossed the road perfectly safely (if not more safely) without his flamboyant display of largesse.

He had the right of way. It’s perfectly clear: the Highway Code dictates that he should not have stopped but continued on his way.

Now, maybe I am just being ungrateful? After all, I would feel a darn sight more aggrieved if he’d mounted the pavement, motored his radiator grill right up my jacksy and then continued merrily on his way without stopping to shout even the briefest of apologies.

But I can’t get over the feeling that his gesture was more about power and superiority than kindness. I didn’t need him to stop. I felt almost bullied into crossing the road in front of him.

The danger with not following the expected codes of conduct of course is that your actions can be misinterpreted. What if his hand signal to cross the road was actually his attempt to dislodge an angry wasp from the breast pocket of his shirt? What if he was merely clearing the air after a particularly foul air biscuit (“fart” to you and me)?

The answer is obvious.

I’d be lying under the bonnet of his car in a non-KwikFit approved position, leaking claret all over the macadam and listening to him shouting at me that he had right of way and what the hell did I think I was doing trying to cross the road in front of him?

*sigh*

Maybe I need to get out more?

Or less?