My cars: a short guide. Part VI - A massive Vauxhall Victor, a Simca, two 2CVs, naivety and a valuable lesson learned

The Vauxhall Victor, which succeeded my Triumph Toledo after that car’s sudden end, had only one thing in its favour: it was powerful. I can’t now remember how large the engine capacity was, but it must surely have been 2 litres. I bought it within weeks of the Toledo being written off - saying ‘writing off the Toledo’ would be inaccurate and unfair, as, for once, the crash wasn’t my fault - because the only legitimate way of claiming mileage expenses from my oh so generous employers was actually to drive the miles. Driving it, and sitting behind the steering wheel gazing some distance to the far end of the bonnet is the closest I have ever come, and the closest I shall ever come, to driving a Cadillac. If I remember correctly, the engine also made a deeply satisfying ‘vroom’ noise which spoke of power and purpose, and it surged forward slowly but surely and was the antithesis of all those little nippy 1 litre cars which rush around here and there rather like neurotic flies. The Victor, though,
had one failing: the heater didn’t work, and as autumn turned to winter that made travelling on as many trips as I was able to arrange in order to clock up the miles increasingly uncomfortable. It's not much fun spending hour upon hour speeding along the motoway freezing your balls off and no amount of buckshee mileage payments make you feel any warmer. When winter finally turned very cold, as it can do in Birmingham, there also came a disaster: there was not enough anti-freeze in the radiator and with the first frost, the radiator froze solid. And that was that. I can’t remember ever driving the Victor again. It was like the model pictured above, although mine was blue. (I rather like how the photographer has elegantly placed the Victor in a rural setting and given it a certain kind of rustic glamour. In real life, you would not find these cars sitting in a field but usually parked outside some pub in a more downmarket part of Nottingham. Actually, rustic charm is rather over-egging the cake. My first thought on seeing the picture above was why is that abandoned car looking so clean and shiny?)
I must now confess that my memory of the sequence of events and which cars I owned when is curiously hazy. I was still working for the CEGB when I bought the Victor, but I left in the early autumn of 1984 to start my photography course at West Bromwich College in Wednesbury, and the car I used to travel the 20-odd miles from my home in Kings Heath to Wednesbury (up the M5, a detail I add for those readers who like these accounts to have a more technical dimension) was my second Citroen 2CV. But before then I had two other cars, and at one point I owned three cars at once, although only because two of them didn’t run. I think the first car I bought once the Victor froze solid, and because I had to get to Wednesbury every day, was a Simca. This cost around £300 - a lot more in 1984 than at the time of writing this account 25 years later - and I thought I had a bargain. The ad in the newspaper classifieds said ‘no MoT’. No bother, I thought, very naively. I’ll get one, it'll only cost me £30. So I bought the car, took it to the garage and asked for an MoT estimate. £500. The car did not seem so much of a bargain after that, and the chap trying to rid himself of what was a pretty useless car had probably not believed his luck when I came along and handed over my money. So, I decided foolishly, I'll run the car without getting an MoT, but soon decided to scrap the Simca when I realised that the brakes were dodgy. On the long, multi-lane run-up to Spaghetti Junction and on my way to college one morning, I had to brake suddenly and almost crashed into the back of a builder’s merchant van. I realised I could not risk using the Simca. I should also add that I cannot remember transferring the insurance from the Victor to the Simca, so I was probably driving it uninsured, too.
At around this point my brother Mark came to live with me, and Mark was with me when I crashed my first 2CV. This was another wreck of a car but which I was too green to realise was on it last legs. It was also a rust bucket. I'd had it for a just week - and proud as punch not only to be owning a 2CV but because in some circles they had a kind of bohemian cachet - before it, too, was a write-off. Mark and I had gone for a drink and had argued. I was in a bad mood and was not taking the care I might while driving. Coming off a roundabout in Kings Norton - we were coming down the Redditch Rd. and turned into Wharf Rd., info for the techies among you courtesy of Google maps - we were approaching the exit of a pub car park - The Navigation Inn also courtesy of Google maps - when a car came straight out and I went straight into its side. My 2CV crumpled, with the front completely stoved in and the chassis warped. I wanted

to call the police (because technically the accident was the other guy’s fault) but the other driver tried to intimidate me by claiming he had many friends among the police based in Kings Norton and they would take his side and make out the accident was my fault. This annoyed me, and the three pints of cider I had been drinking worked their magic and I got angry. Then the other driver pointed out that we would both be breathalysed, and, for once, I was sensible. I let the matter go.
However, as far as cars were concerned I was still in a bind: three cars were parked outside my house, all of which were useless and I needed a car to get to Wednesbury every day.
This is where this account gets hazy. I bought my next car, another 2CV, but one in far better condition, after spotting it while driving past the forecourt of a Fiat dealer. (Which of my three cars I was driving at the time I cannot recall. It might have been the Victor with the radiator unfrozen, but it is more likely to have been the Simca with me driving uninsured. However, I really can't remember.) It was in a row of cars which had all been taken in in part exchange. The asking price was £999, but after looking it over I did something which, for me at the time was quite extraordinary. I asked the salesman whether it would come with a full MoT. He said it would. Then I thought to myself that I would offer him less than £999 and we would haggle. I calculated that I would at least be able to knock one or two hundred off the asking price. So I was about to offer him £750 when, on a whim and why I simply do not know, I told him I would pay £650 for the car. He told me he would look at the figures involved in taking the car in part exchange. He returned a few minutes later and asked: ‘Would that be with a full Mot’. It seemed to me that he was hoping I would relent on that point in the interest of getting a bargain. But I said: ‘Yes.’ It was not the answer I think he was expecting, but to my surprise he agreed.
I learnt a very valuable lesson there and then: in some situations, go for broke. You never know what might come of it, and often you have nothing to lose. I have never been the shy type (except occasionally with girls, though at my age - 95 in a fortnight’s time - I suppose I should start calling them women), but I do have a timid streak - which will be news to many, but I am not being disingenuous. But on that day, standing on the forecourt of a Fiat dealership on Constitution Hill, I fully understood the value of chutzpah. I trust and hope I will never forget it.

Footnote for those who cherish footnotes: astute readers, who are usually those who cherish footnotes and who can recite the Footnote and Related Appendices (Necessary) Act 1983 backwards, will have realised that I have not included a picture of a Simca. I haven't done so because I had the car for only a short time and it doesn't really feel as though it belongs in my collection of car. There is not bond. It was a ratty old car anyway and, most pertinently, our relationship being so short, I can't really remember even what it looked like, except that it was dark grey, and so can't find a picture. Sorry.

Now I know why Somerset Maugham had such a bad reputation - rather unfairly, in my view

I heard the final part of the adaptation of Selina Hastings’ biography of Somerset Maugham on Radio 4, and the rancour against him, which I picked up on as a child and which has, apparently, been history’s verdict of the man, is explained.

Once Gerald Haxton died (of alcoholism), Maugham turned to Alan Searle for companionship, and it seems it was Searle who caused all the trouble which led to Maugham’s rift with his daughter Liza and, indirectly, to being ostracised by the English establishment and a very, very unhappy old age. He met Searle, who was more or less simply an upmarket rent boy, in the late Twenties and moved him into the Villa Mauresque after Haxton died, where Searle took over Haxton’s role and acted as companion, secretary and housekeeper. He was said to have none of Haxton’s charm,

sophistication, elegance, wit or presence. He is described at one point as wandering around the villa in garish shirts, ‘his fat thighs bulging out of too small white shorts’, and being so specific, I would hope Hastings will have referenced the quote. According to Hastings (I should point out that what I write here is merely what I heard on Radio 4), by the Sixties, when Maugham had become a very old man, Searle began to worry that he might be left destitute and started whispering in Maugham’s ear that he might not necessarily have been Liza’s father as his wife Syrie had had plenty of lovers at the time (and was, in newspaper parlance ‘a bit of a goer’. Lord how we guys dream of meeting one of those. Is it ineffably crass to say so?) Maugham was then persuaded to write a further volume of autobiography, which was serialised in the Sunday Express (a paper which is more or less the quintessence of middlebrow) and in which he wrote about his marriage in very unflattering terms. This did not go down well, and even old friends turned against him. Hastings points out, by the way, that Maugham was very old, and more or less senile when he did this.

An especially sad incident came when on his annual visit to London, he went to the Garrick Club as usual, but when he entered the first-floor bar, it fell silent and then one or two members ostentatiously walked out. (I would very much like to bet that the behaviour and moral worth of those who walked out would not have survived much close scrutiny, such is the hypocrisy of all too many of those who pass judgment.) Maugham was distraught. Back at the Villa Mauresque he would have bouts of uncontrollable weeping and outbursts of fury. And that little shit Alan Searle began writing to friends and Maugham’s nephew how impossible Maugham had become, although I should add that in later life he was full of remorse at his shit-stirring. So Maugham died an unhappy man.

The readings from Hastings book included recordings of Maugham himself, and he comes across as rather modest and self-effacing and with a generosity of spirit which is wholly lacking in many other self-regarding 'artists'. I’m sure that, like all of us, he had his faults, but his memory does seem to have been very harshly treated. It is so typical of life that, whenever possible, we prefer to take a narrow and vindictive view, and our judgments ignore almost everything which went before if we are given even half the chance to portray someone in a murky light. It is ironic that Maugham himself once observed: 'We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.' We should try to see the whole man. Let’s hope the future will value his work and the man a little more.

As I am something of a sentimental old softie, the pictures of Maugham I have chosen to illustrate this entry are neither of those with which we are probably all familiar, Maugham the sour-faced old queen who seems to be sneering at the world, but one from when he was much younger, when he was a charming, good-looking guest at parties in fashionable London and when all the ladies (and, of course, men) fancied the pants off him. It is very odd that those pictures of him in his last years portray a man who is totally at odds with earlier impressions.

Barry, who reads this blog, pointed out that Maugham did himself no favours by writing and somewhat sending up London society. It seems that London society bided its time and took its revenge when it finally got the chance to do so. What I find so admirable about Maugham - I have already said this, but I shall repeat it because it is worth repeating - was his sheer professionalism, that come what may and even on his very bad days, he sat down every morning to write. And he did so even knowing that what he was writing on that particular day was, perhaps, not even very good and would not be used. I do so like that attitude. Shame I don't have it, or better, don't yet have it, because I do know from experience that I can have it.

Incidentally, Liza inherited the Villa Mauresque, but Searle was not left destitute. He died a very wealthy man, thanks to Maugham's generosity. The excerpt I heard did not say so, but Maugham legally adopted him as his son.

NB. Pedant's Corner: there are two accepted spellings of 'judgment'. I choose 'judgment' rather than 'judgement' only because it is Daily Mail house style and the one I am accustomed to using at work, and thus also when not at work.

My front tooth - note, tooth, not teeth. A lesson for us all who are flirting with late middle-age

And now for something completely different, not to say veering on the banal.
When I first went to work at the Daily Mail on the features subs desk, the deputy chief sub was a nice chap called Robin Popham. I had just turned 40, and he was two or three years older. That was 19 years ago, and Robin retired when he turned 60 in 2008. They retire them at 60 on the Mail and furthermore until very recently, the paper operated a final salary pension scheme - or whatever its technical name is and still does for long-term employees - so pensions were always rather generous for anyone, such as Robin, who, crucially, had joined before around 1990, when salaries also got a percentage increase. (Three per cent of £20,000 is a lot less than 3 per cent of £60,000, and by 1990 Robin and several others would already have been on a generous whack after the profligate Eighties. But this has absolutely nothing to do with what I mean tell you.)
A year of two before he retired, I noticed that one of Robin’s front teeth was rather larger than the other. I wondered why, in the nigh on 20 years I had known him and always almost sat next to, I’d never noticed this before. It was quite noticeable that it was bigger than its pal. Then, a few months ago, I noticed that one of my front to teeth was larger and more prominent than the other. What was going on? So at my six-monthly check-up by my dentist, I pointed this out and asked him what was going one. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that happens a lot when we get older.’ Oh, really. They didn’t tell us that in reform school.
So now be off, all of you, and check the size of your front teeth.

Somerset Maugham and a warning that first impression might well not be all the are cracked up to be

Radio 4’s Book Of The Week this week is The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings. I’ve so far only read a few of Maugham’s short stories, although a few months ago I bought and briefly started The Painted Veil, mainly, I think, because it had just been made into a film, and although I didn’t at the time carry on with it, I shall finish it.

I have seen none of his plays, and I don’t think they are even performed anymore. I have seen one of the films based on his short story The Letter, which I enjoyed immensely. But did not know a lot of Maugham, except - and this knowledge was based purely on the scraps of hearsay which come our way - that he was ‘queer’ and ‘not very nice’ and that he died an embittered man. Then there are the pictures of him as an old man, his lined face apparently conveying a distain for more or less everything.

I also knew that he held a somewhat odd position in the literary world in that, born in the 19th century and living to a ripe old age, he straddled two worlds. In his work he also held a somewhat odd position. He said of himself that he was in the first rank of second-raters, which I think is Maugham being rather harsh on himself. He became very wealthy, but as far as I can see deservedly so. He was immensely disciplined, and according to Hastings’ biography, when he had finally settled into the Villa Mauresque in (on?) Cap Ferrat, every day - including Sundays and birthdays - he rose, had breakfast and then wrote from eight until noon. He also wrote everything in longhand and given his rather large body of work, I find that sheer professionalism wholly admirable.

Overall, I am now rather puzzled by the somewhat disparaging impression I have of Maugham, one which I more or less adopted wholesale merely because it was the one everyone seems to have had. I think the world, or rather the British world, decided that despite his talent, output, work and wealth, Maugham was, at heart, a wrong ’un for a few essentially trivial reasons.

First, however broadminded we Brits like to think we are, we get rather sniffy when someone of Maugham’s fame and stature decides he would prefer to settle abroad. Abroad, for Brits is for visiting and sneering at. (Anyone who has visited one of the very many Mediterranean resorts popular with Brits and sees how whole communities have been transformed into tacky outposts of little Britain will know that the Brits are only prepared to accept ‘abroad’ on their own terms. Cala Llonga was a case in point.) But Maugham, who loved travelling and went all over the world, decided he wanted to make his home in the South of France.

Then there was the fact the Maugham was ‘queer’. In recent years, Britain has finally grown up on the matter of homosexuality and now longer persecutes those of its kind who are born homosexual. In fact, if anything we have swung to the opposite extreme and are now expected to celebrate gayness in all its myriad manifestations. But that acceptance - describing it as a ‘tolerance’ of homosexuality, as some still do, is horribly patronising, although the attitude conveyed by the use of the word ‘tolerance’ still prevails - is a very recent development, and although every adult knew of ‘queer’ friends, acquaintances and relatives, they were, in the great and dishonorable tradition of British hypocrisy regarded as outcasts. So the impression I inherited was that Maugham, not to put too fine a point on it, was something of a monster.

One thing he did was, it has to be said, rather vindictive: his daughter Liza sued him after he sold a collection of paintings, some of which were meant to be passed on to her when he died. She won her suit and an angry Maugham then declared publicly that he was not her biological father and disinherited her. It might well be true that he was not her father as her mother, Syrie Wellcome, the former wife of the chap who founded the pharmaceutical firm, put it about rather a lot, but if he wasn’t he had never mentioned it before.

He had eventually married Syrie after she became pregnant with Liza, and if he was not the father, or even suspected he was not the father, he would hardly have done that. His angry response was not nice, but on the other hand if those of us who had acted in ways in similarly bad ways in the course of our lives were obliged to leave the room, the room would soon be empty.

I started listening to Radio 4’s readings from Hastings’ biography on Monday, and managed to capture all so far. And the picture of Maugham that emerged is of a far more pleasant character. He had an unhappy childhood and developed a stammer. Once he had qualified as a doctor, he was said to have had rather a gentle bedside manner and took and interest in all his patients, especially the dirt-poor ones from Lambeth. When war broke out he was a highly celebrated and wealthy popular playwright whose worked was being staged on both sides of the Atlantic, yet he voluntarily served with the ambulance brigade, putting his medical training to good use. (He has ceased working as a doctor years earlier.

Later, after that service was curtailed by ill-health, and after he had recuperated, he again served his country, this time working for the secret service in Geneva and later in Russia. He was said to be charming company, was very good-looking and was socially popular. He is said by Hastings to have been very good with children. His candid self-appraisal as a first-rate second-rater speaks of a modesty and honesty which I like to feel is wholly in keeping with his disciplined professionalism. He was no glutton, but kept himself trim by swimming, playing tennis, walking and playing golf. He seems rather to have been put upon by the two major lovers he had, Gerald Haxton and Alan Searle, but he bore it stoically.

Now, I know that all this doesn’t necessarily add up to a row of beans as far as a man’s moral worth is concerned, but it is all rather at odds with the conventional picture I somehow acquired of Maugham the Monster and what Hastings writes in something of a revelation. The picture I now get of Maugham is of a man I should liked to have met and whose company I think I might have enjoyed and respected. If I didn’t have enough books already which are waiting to be read, not least Maugham’s own The Painted Veil, I would buy Hastings’ biography. She wrote a very good one of Evelyn Waugh.

Jesus The Terrorist: a book knocking around the office which has caught my eye and which I shall read. Might well be bollocks . . .

Here at I work last night, I came across a book provocatively entitled Jesus The Terrorist, and after spending a few minutes reading the blurb on the back and part of the introduction, I decided to take it home. (This is not theft by the way as, by general consent, most items one comes across in a newspaper office, especially books and magazines, are common property, by which hacks mean that if you can get away with stealing it without anyone noticing, it's yours. Obviously we draw the line at those items which are personal - wallets, coats, cars, that kind of thing. I should also point out that newspapers are inundated with unsolicited new books, sent in by publishers who know nothing of the industry and feel we might be able to give them a little free publicity. They say you are never more than a few feet away from a rat. Well, where I sit on the feature subs desk, I am never more than a few feet away from a whole pile of books - at least 30 - which have been sent in on spec in the hope that we will take an interest in them and write glowing reviews. They are always ignored, clutter up the place for several years and then, I think, are recycled into a constitutent of tarmacadam. And if they are not, they should be. The books department has even more books, and every so often several hundreds of these are piled several feet high on a desk and everyone is invited to take what they want. I invariably take several and never read any of them. These have included a biography of Hogarth, a biography of Jung and other hi'falutin nonsense in which I am theoretically interested but obviously not interested enough actually to read the books.)
My first reaction when I saw the title Jesus The Terrorist - and I should point out that even though I have read a little more, the jury is still out and shall be for quite some time - was that this was the kind of crap Erich von Daniken used to churn out - Was God An Astronaut? - and latterly a certain Graham Hancock, whose books have often been serialised by the Daily Mail and who is always introduced as once having been on staff at The Economist. (The subtext is that The Economist is a journal of such seriousness that it is incapable of employing anyone who might be a sandwich short of a picnic. And with an eye on the libel lawyers - who these days are everywhere - I must hastily point out that I am not claiming Hancock is in any way mad or a charlatan, just that unfortunately he often gives the impression that the lift doesn't always reach the top floor. Here is his website.)
To digress rapidly back to my theme - a digression from a digression, now that, surely, is true sophistication - the book I - er - filched is not badly written. The author, a Peter Cresswell, who has previously written Censored Messiah (which, on googling, seems to cover more or less the same ground) has a Cambridge degree (but see my caveat about assuming The Economist would never employ a nutter) and a Phd in social anthropology from the University of Wincanton - oh, all right then, York - so just because he can write an English sentence without dropping his 'aitches and avoiding glottal stops doesn't necessarily mean his books are of any worth. But nor should they prima facie be discarded.
His thesis is that far from being a religious leader who was intent on founding a new church, Jesus - apparently the name is a Westernisation of a garbled Greek translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic Yeshua and until 600 years ago was pronounced Iesu here in the West - was one of quite a few Jews rattling around that neck of the woods who actively tried to rid Palestine, Judea and Galilli of the Roman occupation, that his apostles were all more or less part of his extended family (the claim that he had several brothers and sisters has longed been made, although not by the Vatican, and strikes me as eminently reasonable), and that accounts of his life were later wilfully distorted by members of the emerging 'Christian' church in order to fit in with Jewish prophecies.
Now however good, bad or indifferent this book turns out to be, it is an area I find interesting. A few years ago, I read A J Wilson's Jesus, A Biography, and this book seems to cover much the same ground. Both seem to agree that Saul turned Paul was the genius behind the founding of the 'Christian faith', and that as far as the religious sphere was concerned, Jesus had no intention of founding a new Church but was an orthodox Jew who wanted to purify Judaism and return to a simpler way of worship. For example, it seems James, now accepted as his brother, took over the leadership of the small group who followed his teachings after Jesus's death (although Christians will insist that Jesus didn't die) wanted to keep the group as a small Jewish sect and that he came into conflict with Paul who had far, far grander intentions - as we now know.
Wilson's book admirably - in my view - adopts the principle of Occam's razor and when in doubt, his explanations tend to the prosaic rather than the miraculous. I'm rather hoping that when writing Jesus The Terrorist Cresswell has adopted the same principle.
Cresswell does concede that the title of his book is provocative, but he claims this is necessary. He also writes that because of the murky nature of his subject matter and because books are linear (he doesn't say that, I do), he is obliged to present some aspects of what he has to say without at first justifying his claims, but promises later to supply explanations and justifications. Whether or not he does so is the acid test as to whether this is a serious book or just more cack along the lines of von Daniken's drivel. I shall keep you posted. And if I never mention it again, you will know this book went the way of Jenny Uglow's biography of Hogarth.
Incidentally, Cresswell's book will be published by an outfit called O Books which 'operates virtually' and has now office. However, the main man is based in Hampshire.
From the O Books website:

This is the shocking truth:
* Jesus was a zealot who wanted to be King of Israel.
* The apostles and disciples were members of his family, by blood and by marriage, and they went on to wage a war against Rome.
* Far from 'converting', Saul - the false apostle - remained malicious and vindictive to the end.
* Saul started the lie that 'the Jews' killed Jesus, while he himself helped to kill Jesus' brother James.
* Saul invented Christianity, borrowing the rituals of a pagan religion, Mithraism.
* The gospels are a deliberately scrambled version of Jewish zealot propaganda with characters, who were Jewish warriors, stolen and subverted by Christian writers.
AUTHOR: Peter Cresswell graduated as a social anthropologist from Cambridge University and did a post graduate degree in sociology at York. He trained as a sub-editor and worked as a research officer at the Open University. After working as a senior journalist and leader writer, he set up a publicity consultancy. He is the author of Censored Messiah (O Books 1974) which shed new light on the origins of Christianity.

O Books seems to be a busy outfit and has a loads of books on its website. I can't as yet not be sure that is isn't a vanity publisher, although given the number of links it has with distributors worldwide that might be unlikely. Cresswell's new book isn't being published until 2010, so I suppose my copy is technically illegal.

The Vatican's smart footwork on the question of disaffected Anglicans who will be offered their own little room in the great RC mansion and, at a stroke, will increase the number of Catholics in Britain while - at a stroke - heaping even more woe on St Rowan Williams deserves mention, but must have its own entry. Kate will not be in the slightest interested, but I suspect Barry will have a few things to pass comment. Also when pontificating about the issue (which is not such a bad joke in context), I shall merely be regurgitating comments by others I have half understood, so don't hold your breath.

My cars: a short guide. Part V - My Triumph Toledo and another sad end

After the undignified end suffered by my Datsun and I had sold it to my dope dealer (which sounds a lot more louche than was the reality), I needed another car and agreed to buy my flatmate Wayne's Triumph Toledo. Wayne Francis was a reporter on the Evening Mail where I worked as a sub, and Wayne liked a pint or two, then three or four, then five or six. The night Wayne didn't arrive home three sheets to the wind was the day of the Second Coming.

Wayne was from Bristol and had a broad Bristol accent. In many ways he fitted the clichéd view of reporters (as I did when I was still working as one, except for the heavy drinking. One girlfriend I had was warned by a doctor in the hospital in which she worked that reporters were like sailors - they had a girl in every port. She was living in South Wales and I was living in Newcastle at the time, and when she told me what the doctor had told her, I pooh-poohed it and swore my undying love. Unfortunately, I WAS running two more girls at the time, one of whom even had the same name as she did, she made it difficult when one of them rang and I was told: "Patrick, Amanda on the phone for you."), but he was a good reporter and eventually became the Sun's royal correspondent.

I met him again years later when he got sick of following assorted royals around the world and joined the Mail instead. He told me that the Palace operated a system of apartheid among the various royal correspondents and distinguished them between 'one of us' like, for example, the Mail's Richard Kay, and 'not one of us' like, for example gobby, hard-drinking Wayne from Bristol. But it didn't bother him one jot.
I can't remember why he was selling his Toledo (his was dark blue, not brown like the one pictured), but I was interested in buying it. I no longer needed a car in order to bump my income be fiddling expenses, because as a sub-editor I didn't get expenses, but I still needed a car to get around. It, too, provided good service for several years, although, if I remember correctly, the radio went on the blink, and there was some special kind of fiddling around with it to get it to work.

The end came for the Toledo quite quickly and in an unexpected way. By then I was working for Power News, the CEGB staff newspaper, and was once again creaming the moolah in buckshee total bullshit mileage expenses even though I was still a sub. (If you remember, we used to organise long and completed pointless trips simply to claim mileage, the odd thing being that everyone from the editor up knew what was going on.)

First the chassis 'broke'. I use inverted commas because I am not to sure chassis can 'break' but this one did and the engine sank by what must have been a foot or two. Now, I would simply get rid of a car like that an accept the financial hit, but then, I was rather more stupid and got a garage to repair it. This they did. A week later, I was returning from the printers in Bicester and was just north of Stratford when a car suddenly drove onto the main road and I went straight into it.

My car was a write-off, and I was lucky to survive, especially as my seatbelt was broken and I was, to all intents and purposes, not wearing one. And that was the end of the Toledo, just a week after spending £400 (in 1983, now, in 2013, anything between £1,1018 and £1,963 according to a very useful website called What's It Worth which you can find here for working out today's prices in pounds and here for doing the same in dollars) on having the bloody thing repaired. Next came my massive Vauxhall Victor, which was built and, unfortunately, also drove like a tank.

Modern dilemmas: an occasional series.

I have called this Modern Dilemmas, but actually the dilemma is age-old - only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. In fact, nothing has been changed and I shall begin with names. My daughter Elsie turned 13 in August, but didn't have a party at the time. Instead, tonight she and three of her friends were taken to the local pub for a meal. Her friends were Ruth, Amazon and Amber, and immediately the reader will realise that this is being written in the 21st century. Once only the heroines in schlock novelettes and lowbrow TV drama had names like Amber and Amazon. But in the year of Our Lord 2009, young 13-year-old girls from Cornish secondary schools are now so called. I had heard about Amber and Amazon but I had never met them before. I knew Ruth well. All three are very pleasant girls and none really has a Cornish accent. Instead, all of them, young Elsie included, speak in that way, like, in which Ts are dropped regularly but which is otherwise pretty classless. Even Princess Di herself had an odd accent which would not have been out of place in a typing pool. And Tony Blair was the worst offender for leaving out his Ts, especially as he did it to suck up to the great unwashed.
The dilemma was that all three of my daughter's guest, although Ruth to a slightly lesser extent, have appalling table manners. Elsie, I'm glad to say, more or less passes muster, except that her manners have slightly gone to seed since she has been attending Wadebridge Secondary School. But when she is at home, I pull her up smartish, even at the risk of being unpopular. I can honestly say it's the only thing I am quite strict on. But what do I do about the table manners of the other three when I am sitting at table with them? My inclination is gently to admonish them in the kindest, but firmest way possible. But that can so often go awry, leaving the child involved rather bruised. And, I here you ask, is it any of my business anyway? Well, I think it is. However, tonight I took the diplomatic option and said nothing. I merely bit my lip, grinned and bore it all stoically, not least because I didn't want to show up my daughter in front of her friends. Young ones are very sensitive about these matters. (As it was I was ticked off once or twice for laughing 'loudly' and only got off the hook a little when Amazon announced her father also laughed loudly and was always being told off for doing so.)
Even when Amber attacked her ham using her fork like a dagger - stab, stab, stab - I was, to my own horror - a model of discretion. I pride myself that I didn't even allow myself to look pained or sigh quietly. An onlooker would have assumed I was quite happy to see these children eating like slobs (I do exaggerate a little, but you get the picture.)
I have faced this dilemma before, when my nieces and nephews across the lane in the farm have come for supper or when I have been invited for supper there. At the risk of sounding prissy, it turns my stomach to be sitting at table with someone who, as they unfortunately do, eat with their mouths open and who don't put all the food in their mouth at once, but leave some hanging out. When I have been over there, I have kept quiet. When they have been eating at my table I have, as gently as possible said something (to my wife's irritation as she is the kind who hate confrontation of any kind). But what is one supposed to do?

An afternoon with Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde. Could have done without Dirk Baby. Ham? Yes, and then some

The Daily Mail is giving away a set of 'Hollywood Classic' films, i.e. tat which otherwise no one in their right mind would consider trying to sell. So on Wednesday, I wandered through to Promotions and grabbed myself several. At the moment I am lying in bed with 'flu-like symptoms' (it's not a cold, as I don't have a headache - I suspect it has something to do with those bloody statins) so I decided to watch one of them. I chose Darling because everyone talks about it, but having seen it, I wonder why. Christ, has it dated. And the script is by Frederic Raphael - he even won an Oscar for it - so every second line is a clever quotable quote. It also stars Dirk Bogarde who, in my opinion can't act his way out of a paper bag, always comes across as gay and should have stuck to light comedy. If you want to see some hilariously bad acting in a hilariously terrible film, watch Bogarde in Visconti's The Damned. He and it are truly awful. Who says homosexuals always have better taste. Darling is also pretty dire. At the time, it was daring and modern, but now it just comes over as facile and dated. Those of your interested in a little more pfgpowell bile might care to visit my IMDB review

Blogging: when will it end?

This blogging is getting to be a habit and it seems that so far I have written 419 entries this week alone. When will it end? What will end it? Death? Bankruptcy? Can people (either of them) really find any satisfaction at all in reading the inconsequential dribblings of a washed-up hack whose only gift is knowing more than the average joe about where to put the commas? I hope so.

NB A while ago, I started an entry about 'how the Left works' and got so carried away that I never got around to finishing that particular strand. So if you are getting bored with my interminable account of how over the years cars have got the better of me, stick with it: and exposé of the fiendish Left is still to come.

My cars: a short guide. Part IV — my Datsun Cherry and its sad end

Before I start, I should note that I am quite aware that an account of all the cars I have owned might not make the most interesting reading. However, I have private (and very simple) reasons for doing so.
The 1300 did great work, carrying me up and down the country to visit my then girlfriend - I was living in Newcastle and drove down every 3/4 weeks to see her in South Wales - and then saw me through to my move to Birmingham when I joined the Evening Mail as a sub. But within a few months, a turned into a side street just off Colmore Circus where the Mail offices were (they're now in some godforsaken industrial estate in Castle Bromwich near Spaghetti Junction), lost my concentration as I cheerily waved to a friend and crashed into a car coming the other way. The car wasn't a write-off, but it would have cost an arm and a leg to have it repaired and I couldn't be arsed. The only silver lining was that about an hour after the crash, I was approached by one of the compositors who I had never seen before who informed me that he had witnessed the crash from an upstairs window and that the other guy had been driving in the middle of the road. So we were both to blame, and as far as insurance was concerned, I wasn't out of pocket. I got rid of the 1300 and bought my nest car. The one irritating aspect to the 1300, which was otherwise quite a nice car, was that BL, or whatever they were calling themselves that week, had used a fancy hydro-suspension technique in its design, which provided a great ride when it was in good nick, but which you could never again get quite right once it was out of kilter. And by the time I came to get rid of the 1300, it was well out of kilter. Steering was becoming a challenge especially at high speeds on the motorway.
Datsun Cherry (which looked very much like the one in the picture on the right) was for sale at a secondhand car dealership at the bottom of Milner Road, the street where I lived in Selly Park, Birmingham. It cost was in a very nice condition and cost me a round £1,000. It had no blemishes of any kind and ran very nicely indeed. I was particularly pleased with the spring-loaded gear shift. However, a week or so after buying it, the alternator failed. I was in Leicester at the time, visiting me girlfriend (another one, not the one mentioned above) and, to be fair, there is no way the dealer could have known it was on its way out. However, once I had bought another (courtesy of the RAC chap who came out to help me - they and their AA counterparts have a sideline in supplying parts to stranded motorists who pay a little over the odds, but are grateful for getting the part there and then) and was back home in Birmingham, I walked to the bottom of the road and asked the dealer - there was two of them, in fact - what they were going to do about it. Nothing, they told me, and pointed out, as I just have, that there was no way they could have known the alternator was about to go tits up. Dear reader, I then did something I have never done before and which taught me a valuable lesson: I simply sat it out, was perfectly reasonable and insisted that I should get part of the money back. I was patient, kept it friendly, but I didn't let up. And, finally, I bored them into submission. I can't remember how much they gave me to offset the cost of a new alternator, but I remember being happy with the sum.
The Cherry gave sterling service, was a nippy little car and I liked it. Then things went a wrong. I noticed a little rust on one of the front wings, a tiny amount really, hardly noticeable, but still being young and stupid enough to fancy a little car DIY, I went around to a friend's house and borrowed his Black & Decker. The idea was that I would gently sand of the top coat, get to the rusted area, sand away the rust, apply a primer, then apply paint. The trouble was that the deeper I sanded (actually I was using the rotary wire attachment), the further I delved into filler: it turned out that most of the wing consisted of filler. It seems the dealers were buying up care which were closer to wrecks than anything else, having the body tarted up and selling them. It made - and makes - no sense to me unless they bought them for a song and the bodywork undertaken cost them almost nothing, or else they would not make a profit. And another puzzle was that mechanically the Cherry was very sound and I do not remember having any trouble at all. Anyway, needless to say (although, as always when people use that stupid phrase, I shall say it anyway, whether or not it needs to be said), after my botched attempt at DIY - I didn't fill in the rather large hole I had made - the car looked rather more ragged than I should have liked. Added to that, while on a trip to Essex to try to get off with a girl I fancied (I didn't), someone skidded in the snow and smashed into the Cherry while it was parked outside her house. So it looked even more ragged. That's when I decided to get rid of it. I sold it to the West Indian chap I used to buy my blow from at the Kings Head in Balsall Heath. I was surprised he wanted it, but he seemed happy enough. My next car was a Triumph Toledo, which I bought from my flatemate, Wayne Francis.