MEMORIES
Marion and George celebrate their first wedding anniversary and save up to become the first members of their families to buy a car
MY readers are certainly on the ball. So many got in touch to point out my error in my last column – if I earned roughly £5 per week how could I save £5 per week?
It should have been, of course, £5 per month. When I am writing I became completely engrossed in what happened all that time ago and forget to check! Lesson learned!
May 19, 1952, was our first wedding anniversary. When we exchanged cards, George also gave me a prettily wrapped gift, a necklace of opals and looked somewhat disappointed to only receive a card.
I gently reminded him the first anniversary is ‘paper,’ so he had to open his card. When he did and found £60 in crisp new fivers and a (somewhat poor) drawing of a car, his face lit up.
However, that was still not enough to buy a car, so after much talking we decided we could raid our post office account, because if we bought a car we wouldn’t need a holiday. (Actually, we did have a wonderful holiday since Mum and Dad had booked a caravan at Bowleaze Cove, Weymouth, and there was room for us. It worked so well we returned quite a few times).
However, first things first; George had learned to drive in the army but now needed to take a driving test. That was about ten bob, but easy to arrange quite quickly, and then there was road tax. That was about the same price but, above all, how could we find the rest of the money?
Well in those days there was only one way – save hard. And with a bit of luck George’s dad might lend us a few quid. Also, in September George would be 21 years of age and start earning a man’s salary!
Anyway, all those things came to pass and shortly after we set forth to purchase our – second hand?
Third hand? Fourth hand? – car.
After a short search we found a ‘our’ car, a black Morris Twelve (?) … We still had to take out some finance since it cost £115 but then it was ours!
I think I could have walked home in the time it took George to gingerly drive home but then it was time to show the family! They all marvelled since we were the very first of our family and friends to buy a car.
Looking back, it was a funny old thing, running boards each side. Every time our Gran stepped on them, they just creaked and creaked. There were two orange indicators, one on each side obviously, that looked like rabbit ears and a starting motor!
I will always say that car had its own personality. For a start it didn’t like Summers Hill, one of the steepest hills in Bristol. And it could be very temperamental, so temperamental we named it ‘Precarious,’ and just to make sure when we turned left or right one of us stuck our arm out of the window to make sure any other driver, should there be one, knew we were turning.
In 1951 there were very few cars on the road and so when we began to venture a bit farther afield, slow as we were. Driving was very much a pleasure and, as George said, not so hard on the bum as cycling!
Our first long trip was when we drove to Weymouth and it took quite a long time on the old A38. All you needed to enjoy days out was a bladder like a camel (as Mum once remarked, alright for the men!), and a bottle of lemonade.
We always did arrive in the end, unless of course, we broke down, which in the beginning we often did. Many other cars followed ‘Precarious’ but that one was the one that gave us the most fun!
Take care, lots of love Marion xx