{"id":1010,"date":"2006-01-13T08:56:20","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T08:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dml360.wordpress.com\/2006\/01\/13\/13-january-2006\/"},"modified":"2010-05-26T23:00:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T22:00:07","slug":"13-january-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/?p=1010","title":{"rendered":"13 January 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Speaking of cars, this the first recorded car in my family. You can just make out my father David in his beloved MG – picture taken by my mother Phyllis on the Nant-Gwynant Pass in Snowdonia. They also took it to Scotland on their honeymoon in about 1937. Other cars of his that I can remember are an early Vauxhall DPW 155, when we lived at 15 Brian Avenue, Norwich and I was about four. Then a Rover and finally a Lea Francis, which he had when he died in 1956.<\/p>\n

My mother learned to drive in the early 60s and had two or three Morris 1000s (one at a time). Then a fairly primitive Vauxhall in which we went to Switzerland in 1971. She also had a Renault 5, which I liked a lot, and then later a Metro.\u00a0 Possibly some others. I learned to drive in her Morris 1000, taught by a friend, David Green, and passed the test without having an official lesson. My wife and son did the same – both taught by me.<\/p>\n

My first car was a black Ford Prefect, which I bought for about \u00a3100 from the Coomes – friends in London. I could just about service it, after being shown how by the husband of Diane Jones (so Mr Jones, then). She was Jim Douglas’ secretary on Christianity Today magazine in London – sadly died not long ago in Norfolk. The Ford Prefect also went to Switzerland.<\/p>\n

We then moved on to an Austin 1100, which I bought from a garage in North London and which I suspect had been in a fairly serious accident. It tended to grind to a halt in wet wheather because of damp on the distributor. Once in Norwich I sold it for \u00a370 and bought a white Fiat 500 for \u00a3700 from the Eagle Garage on Newmarket Road. It was a demonstrator. Very rudimentary vehicle which gradually fell apart: I just managed to get it to Pointers on Aylsham Road to pick up its replacement, a red Fiat 127. This was followed by a blue version of the same car, obtained from Woodland Car Sales a couple of years later. I was quite fond of both of them. We then moved upmarket slightly and got a rust-coloured Fiat Strada which was a very heavy vehicle. We swapped this fairly quickly for a Renault 21 –\u00a0 a lovely car to drive, if not totally reliable. I remember the fuel pump going on the way down to Sussex. This car was “written off” in a slow-speed collision with a Volvo at the junction of Thorn Lane and Rouen Road in Norwich and replaced by a blue Fiat Tipo. This was around 1990.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t too impressed with the Tipo \u2013 it seemed far too heavy for its size. But in the early 90s I was driving pool cars as part of my job, and one of them was a Mazda 323, with pop-up headlamps. This was such a great car that it was not long before I sold the Tipo and bought one \u2013 a red one, from Wrights on Cromer Road. A couple of years later I changed it for a green one, which I kept for many years and which I enjoyed enormously. But eventually it had to go and was replaced by a black 323 Sport at the end of 2002, when I retired.<\/p>\n

In September 2004 we bought a black MX5 Euphonic for Dot, who was still working. She retired at the end of 2005; she still has the MX5, but we have now bought a new Mazda 3 Sport \u2013 this time blue and a saloon instead of a hatchback. It arrives in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of cars, this the first recorded car in my family. You can just make out my father David in his beloved MG – picture taken by my mother Phyllis on the Nant-Gwynant Pass in Snowdonia. They also took it to Scotland on their honeymoon in about 1937. Other cars of his that I can … Continue reading 13 January 2006<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[938],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1597,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/1597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}