MY FIRST CAR
BBC Radio York reporter Julia Lewis adored her first car, a bright yellow Mini Metro, but she said she found that it was ever so unreliable, especially during wet weather.
“I loved it,” she said. “I had it for a few years and had lots of adventures in it but it was very unreliable.
“After a while I realised it didn’t do well in the rain. Eventually I found out water was getting into the distributor.
“The car was yellow and I loved it. I was at Nottingham University at the time and it took me all over the country. It was a good car really and I quite liked the colour.”
She was a member of National Breakdown – the recovery company now known as Green Flag – and she says she got more than her money’s worth. “I was always calling on their help and they were very good,” she said. “They always managed to fix it and get me on the road again. It took me a while to find out what the problem was but it was water getting into the distributor. So in the end it was a good idea not to drive in the rain.”
Julia, who has worked for Radio York for more than 30 years, now doesn’t have her own car but she uses work cars for out-and-about reporting. She uses her husband’s Mitsubishi occasionally. “He likes bigger cars but I’m quite happy with smaller ones,” she said.
“Living in York is great but parking in the city is difficult so I tend to walk or cycle,” she said. “I do have a BBC satellite car which I can use when I’m working which is great. It has BBC written on the side of it so people definitely know who you are. It’s nice because when you go to some of the villages in North Yorkshire it has a sense of occasion that the BBC is here.”
Julia was born in Gloucestershire and raised in Cheshire but has lived in Yorkshire for a long time now.