What we value …
Anyone with a birthday near Christmas will know that it can be a bit of a curse. Just before Christmas and you are probably making things too expensive for everyone. Just after Christmas and it can all feel a bit lost.
The only time it worked in my favour was on my 18th birthday. I persuaded everyone who might conceivably have been considering a present for Christmas or birthday, to make it cash. Putting everything together with some slender savings I had just enough to buy my first car.
The Morris Minor saloon remains, in my view, a triumph of engineering. It was virtually indestructible, with an engine housing roomy enough to walk around, wings that were bolted on not welded and a hole in the front bumper allowing the engine to be hand-cranked if the electric ignition failed. With a top speed of just over 60 mph, it would never set the pulse racing, but I loved it.
A wing needed replacing and the elderly paintwork was starting to fail but that was easily put right. I couldn’t afford a respray but my father, a City of Salford policeman found some left over ‘police station blue’ paint, and I could afford a paint brush. I spent hours sanding and painting and the end result, although less stylish than I’d hoped, did at least give the bodywork a consistent colour.
After two years I traded up to a Vauxhall Viva, mainly because it had an electric aerial. I sold the Morris to a teacher in my local school. A born-again Christian, she promptly made her mark and put a ‘Jesus is Lord’ sign at the top of the windscreen. Shortly afterwards, it was stolen and used as an unlikely (but very reliable) getaway car following a bank robbery in Manchester. The thieves also stole her bible and hymn book, which she viewed as a piece of missionary work.
Perhaps it was because it had such character, or perhaps it was because I had to really work on it, but of all the cars I’ve owned none has called out in me the same emotional bond as that Morris. I suspect this is true of many things. Things which are too easy leave us untouched; things we have to work at, stay with us and have abiding value.