The times they are a-changing
Campbell Spray wonders about the future and then takes a trip down memory lane to when war and social distancing were different concepts
THIS is probably not the time to be a motoring correspondent. If you are allowed out at all, it definitely is not to go roaring out over the hills and byways testing a car, nor can you stomp through car showrooms, visit garages or even, heaven forbid, travel overseas for an exciting launch.
In fact, hopefully the latter will be much reviewed when all this current situation settles down. It was always environmentally and ethically rather questionable.
The way the future pans out for motoring generally is a massive dilemma. How and when the economy recovers and restrictions are lifted is core to it all, obviously. But then will commuters want to return to the relative isolation of their own car rather than take public transport?
However, thousands upon thousands of people may stay working from home and not have to travel anyway.
Will the massive growth of online shopping and home delivery of food takeaways affect the main functions of the family car? With people taking pay cuts and many more losing their jobs, will the whole principles of a booming economy which underlie the personal contract plan (PCP) be taken away, making car purchasing a very different proposition entirely?
And then how does all this fit in with the need for a green economy and much greater environmental awareness? Is the whole situation that has developed a massive wakeup call to the world from the planet itself? The year will be a write-off for all car sales. More jobs will go and businesses will fail. It’s a pity as some manufacturers were really getting their act together and producing some excellent new cars, especially electric.
However, it is good to see across the world that many motor companies are using their expertise in production to turn their attention to delivering much-needed ventilators and other equipment. A real war-time situation in reverse. As Isaiah says, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares”. Indeed.
TALKING of war, people ask — I hope jokingly — if the present crisis is like it was in the last world conflict? Well, no. This is an emergency for the digital age. A week seems like a year and news — true and false — is bombarding us on all sorts of devices.
World War II, which actually ended four years before I was born, ran for a long six years from September 1939 to August 1945. However, there also was an emphasis then on getting news from trusted sources like the newspapers, and, in Britain, the BBC. The newsreader had to announce their name so people could be sure they were getting the correct information, in as much the censor allowed.
In fact, when people ask me about the last war, they are strangely not far off the mark as I am in a rather privileged place to answer them. I have a large box of my father’s letters to my mother during the war.
He was a Royal Marine officer who had been evacuated to Egypt on May 31, 1941, from Crete after the German invasion of the island. Luckily for me, nine days later he met Ellen Menzies, a senior Australian nurse who was based at a frontline hospital dealing with some absolutely horrific casualties, many of whom she had to put an end to their pain.
Until they were married six years later, they wrote to each other nearly every day. My father was on the move a lot on very active service across Europe, the Western Desert and Asia — a bit “hairy” at times he told me — so unfortunately I have only his letters to my mother, all ordered and tightly bound.
Gradually, I am trying to read and transcribe them, but there could be between 1,500 and 2,000, so it will be a long job as each is about 800 words.
However, just looking at a few letters at random, I gather that there was no concept of social distancing in that war. There was a lot of intimacy, parties, drinking and other socialising.
In just some of them that I was looking at the other day, I find my father attending a play and getting annoyed by rowdy “soldiers and factory girls”, turning down a seduction attempt by his estranged first wife, going on a picnic with some other women, getting rather “tight” and a bit “squiffy” with a fellow officer and making plans for a party at the mess.
Reading through the lines, I think my mother was doing much the same and my father hopes his “darling, darling, darling Ellen”, who he remembers had her “sweet head” next to him on the pillow not that long ago, won’t fall to temptation.
But both of them were very keen motorists and had cars at an early age. When they met in Egypt, the downtime from the front was quite exotic and some years back I came across a photograph of my mother standing next to a DeSoto coupe which, according to the caption on the back written by my father, he and she had borrowed from a nightclub owner. There were also photographs of my father with his Humber staff car and another of his driver Marine Gould next to another very military vehicle. I did use the photographs as part of a motoring supplement eight years ago, but I think they are worth publishing again.
LAST weekend I should have been going back in time a bit again, as my three surviving children had clubbed together to buy me a really special present on my big birthday which was the day after Christmas. We were all to meet at London’s Euston Station and board the luxurious Caledonian Sleeper to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands for three days.
It was a trip I had often done with my mother 60 years ago when we would go up to the family house in the far north of Sutherland.
Never mind, we will do it again when all of this is over.
In the meantime, just at the hour when we were meant to board, the four of us — me; Laura, a nurse in Greater Manchester; Marcus, an economist in London; and Rachael, a project manager working between London, Dublin and Spain; met for a cocktail over Zoom.
For some reason, I couldn’t get the opening scene of Macbeth, the infamous ‘Scottish play’ feared by actors, out of my mind. As the three witches enter, the first one chants: “When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” Stay safe.