Cars

I guess I've had a close connection to cars and vehicles in general from an early age. My father was a London Cab driver, so right back in the 50s, we had a vehicle when most others were riding bikes or taking the bus. Our next door neighbour had a motorbike and sidecar (which was great fun), and at the other end of the road, the garage owner had an MG.

My earliest recollection of "driving" was sitting on my father's lap in his Wolseley Oxford cab and "Driving" home down the street. That might sound scandalous now, but remember this was the mid 50s and the chances of meeting another vehicle coming the other way in our street were practically nill. These were the days when we would play in the street, and if a vehicle turned into the road, we would stop our game, wait for it to pass, and then continue with our game.

My daily job was to empty the ashtrays and sweep the floor in the taxi's passenger compartment and generally dust and clean. Any loose change I found under the seat squab was my payment, and it often paid well! In the days when 4d bought a bag of sweets, half a crown (that's 2s 6d, or 30d) was a small fortune.

We used Dad's cab as our family transport. This was a bit of a problem; if Dad drove with the meter flag up, he was legally bound to stop if someone hailed him. But if he drove with it down, the meter was running and he had to pay tax on the imaginary fare he wasn't carrying. So in 1960, Dad reckoned he had enough money to buy a car. He was looking at a Ford Anglia, but my sister wasn't having any of that. She hunted round the showrooms and persuaded a salesman to sell us last year's Vauxhall Victor at the same price as a Ford Anglia - a serious discount (about £500 instead of £600 as I recollect).

Over the following years, I learnt how to do the weekly service on the car, how to change the plugs and points, and do all the things that were necessary to keep cars going in those days. Meanwhile, the Oxford taxi had to go as it was the mandatory 10 years old, and Dad replaced it with a Beardmore Paramount mk7. Added to my daily responsibility was the task of getting the cab out of the garage, so by the time I was 17 and ready to "learn to drive", I'd had years of manoeuvring vehicles at low speed.

My father had been an officer in the Royal Transport Corps in the war and was a very good driving instructor. He got me to drive to school every morning, and at that rate, it didn't take me long to learn roadcraft. But being a London Cabbie, I guess it's not surprising that my father also took me into central London once I was ready for it. I have this vivid memory of reaching Marble Arch, seeing everything aiming straight at me and me taking my foot off the accelerator to apply the brake. My father shouted, "Don't stop!" and I learnt the lesson that, in London the only rule is to keep moving. Years later, I took a group of university lecturers up to the British Museum in a hired MPV. At one point, we were in three lanes coming into two, and I was between a bus and a lorry. We got to the point where I had an inch either side and decided it was time to give way, much to the relief of my passengers.

My driving test was a bit of fun - I got a cancellation at short notice, but the car failed its MoT the Saturday before my test and couldn't be fixed for a week. I rushed out to a driving school, but they didn't have anything like a Victor, so I took my test in a Mini on the basis that it would be better to have a car that was totally different rather than one which was nearly the same. My examiner managed to find impossible roads that I didn't know still existed, and I managed to hit the kerb whilst pulling over to stop by the side of the road, but he was kind and passed me anyway.

Anyway, time moves on, and over the years I've had the privilege of driving vans, small and large camper vans, trailers, and a 39 seater coach. I've driven abroad in different driving cultures in both left-hand and right-hand drive vehicles. Oh - and of course there's the go-karting and single-seater racing experiences too.

I hadn't realised just how boring modern driving has become until I discovered classic cars. I sort of feel I've always driven classic cars, it's just that they were called "old bangers" when I was driving them. But I do remember driving our BX19 GTi and thinking it drove like it was on rails. Since then, I hadn't realised that as a driver, I've become more and more disconnected from the road in recent years. So picking up a Jensen Healey and rediscovering the joy of "feeling the road" was a treat. And our current car, an early MX5, is just such fun to drive.