Memory Lane

Eighty years ago, my father, Sidney Greene, was one of only two one-armed racing drivers, speeding around Brooklands, beating records. Archie Scott-brown was the other.

After the Second World War, the rules were changed and he wasn’t allowed to compete. So he found a very young Stirling Moss to drive for him, followed by Roy Salvadori.

Then recently I found myself at Goodwood, looking at cars and … incredible. It couldn’t be the same one, could it? The classic cars lined up on the grid were all old-timers, good-time girls showing their Botox with pride.

I looked down at the programme. It was a Maserati 250F – here was my father’s much loved racing car, the last remaining token of an old man’s excesses and triumphs. I wanted to slip into the driver’s seat, but of course I wasn’t allowed near her. She was special; cordoned off with smart red braid to accentuate the gap between her royalty and me, a mere member of the public.

She was here to honour Roy Salvadori, my father’s glamorous racing driver and partner in speed and high living. I gazed at the car, transported back to a whisper of cigarette smoke and leather, where my father would be seated, his silver hair belying his youthful face, grinning with the delight of being surrounded by what he loved most. I felt a silly girlish pride in acknowledging the glamour of their world in those days before health and safety ruled.

He was never a conventional father, of course. He was known as ‘the wingless wonder’, owing to the loss of his left arm in a teenage accident. He’d sweep up to collect me from village dances in a Lancia or an Aston Martin, smelling of whisky and exuding charisma with his Craven A.

‘Had a good time?’ he’d ask as I slid into the seat beside him. Never anxious or negative like some girls’ fathers. How could a village dance seem dangerous when you’d driven up the sloping walls of Brooklands without even a crash helmet and with only one arm?

At Goodwood, I turned and walked away. It wasn’t my world and never had been. I poked a tear away from my eye as I reached the car park and found my Clio. There was nothing to cry about. It was a celebration, after all. ‘Cheers, Dad,’ I thought as I drove away and turned left out of Memory Lane.

More Memory Lanes on the Oldie App See page 6