In praise of the humble "Moggy Minor"...
Soon after I qualified as a primary school teacher, I bought my first car from a little old lady in a neighbouring village in Northern England. The car resided in her garage, and was in very good condition: indeed, it looked as if it had hardly been used. The registration plate revealed that it had been built in 1958, but its condition belied its true age. It was shiny black with a very sporty red stripe down its side. It was love at first sight.
The minute my new steed arrived at my parents' home, I opened up the bonnet and had a good look at the engine, which I then proceeded to clean very carefully. My Dad was amazed at this unexpected prowess.
Being so very recently a student, I was homesick for York and my friends still back there, so my little Moggy Minor and I paid many a visit across the Pennines via the M62 motorway, which has the dubious accolade of having the highest summit of any of the motorway system in England. Bumble, as my newly-christened car became known, proved rather reluctant to trundle uphill over Saddleworth Moor, but loved coming back down the other way from Yorkshire to Lancashire: almost as if she (for it was most definitely a 'she') knew she was coming home. Built like a tank, and very solid, she flew back down the carriageway past Rochdale into Greater Manchester.
One of the idiosyncracies of having such a comparatively ancient car was that I had to learn how to double de-clutch from first to second gear, which was quite an aquired art. The windscreen wipers were at best intermittent; the heating system rudimentary. Later the car developed a basic air-conditioning system: a hole underneath the chassis! The seats, however, were leather and quite luxurious. I developed quite strong arm muscles as a result of wrestling with the very heavy steering system and actually had to use the hand-signals taught when learning to drive, as the indicators (little orange flaps which were supposedly operated via the battery) often refused to do their duty.
The car was so solid that I became quite blase when reverse-parking into the space in front of our little terraced house when I first got married. Unfortunately my nonchalence backfired when settling Bumble into the local multi-storey car park as I hit a bollard and the bumper fell off. I really didn't appreciate that little car enough.
A couple of years later, the sad day came when we had to part with my lovely little car as we were expecting our first baby and couldn't afford the insurance and tax on two cars, so I sold my little Moggy to a friend whose husband was a car mechanic. He spent many hours restoring the car to her original glory, for which I was grateful, but I have never forgotten the excitement of my first car and would love to be the proud owner of another Morris Minor at some time in the future. Who knows, it may even be Bumble!
