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With a creeping sense of paranoia, I really am starting to think they’re after me. Not the people I sold that 306 to, although… no, it’s the massed ranks of the Morris Minor world, ever since I stopped by their stand at the NEC back in November and accepted a free drink.

Never mind the regular updates from Matt Tomkins on his latest project – I’ve developed a degree of immunity to those. It really kicked off with an email out of the blue from Paul Ludlow, who as you can see on the opposite page has bought my old Spitfire 1500-powered Traveller. That was the last of the seven Minors I’ve owned, and it was a jolt to realise I’d sold it 19 years ago. I then revived many memories by making copies for Paul of all the times that the car appeared in

Staff Car Sagas from 1998 to 2000.

Then someone else posted photos on Facebook of a red four-door Minor with a Fiat twin-cam engine in a scrapyard. It looked very much like ‘948 SMM’, the car I sold 30 years ago that has not been seen since, but remains on the DVLA’S records. Zooming in, especially on the engine bay, told me it wasn’t my old car. But it brought many even fonder memories flooding back. To cap it all, from a similar distance in the dim and distant past an old friend and Minor specialist from Australia, Paul Kelly, sent a catch-up message after about twenty-odd years. With photos of amazing Minors attached.

I don’t think I can fight it much longer. Once I get hold of a garage, could it see the arrival of Minor number eight? It feels inevitable. I’m even close to the funds for it. Watch this space.

‘Fond Minor memories have been flooding back of late’