Today is a sunny Saturday, and on a day such as this I would normally be pulling back the barn doors and rolling out the Landrover for a trip to the beach - only I don’t have a Landrover any more, because I sold it to buy a laptop. It seemed like a good deal at the time, the Landy was hardly used and I knew I’d need a laptop for my new career as diarist and international woman of mystery. But today I’m looking at the shiny techno tool and wishing it was a big, green, petrol-guzzling road hog, with rusty doors and a mind of its own. Admittedly my Landrover wasn’t the easiest of vehicles to drive, with no synchromesh between first and second gears, heavy steering and brakes that gave ABS a whole new meaning. (‘Assisted Braking System’ became ‘A Big Stamp’ in my car). But for all its little idiosyncrasies, my 1959 Series Two was a thing of beauty and a wonder to behold.

I bought the jolly green giant when Charlie and I were first married. It was a reaction against being told to sell my beloved Golf G.T.I and buy a Volvo hatchback. My husband deemed the Golf to be an unsuitable car for a camerawoman; Charlie wanted me to be safe on the road, which was understandable, but taking away a hot hatchback from a 24 year old woman and replacing it with a Volvo 340 is like removing a sexy thong and replacing it with big pants and a Tena Lady pad. They are both undeniably safe, but oh, the embarrassment of being seen in them…
Driving that car was something akin to being brought to a climax by an arthritic man with short-term memory loss; when you asked for speed, all you got was a slight pause, and then a resumption of slow miles per hour. You got there eventually, but it took so long that by the time you’d arrived you were left wishing you’d never bothered. The journey was never pleasurable, and I grew to hate the car; I also realised why Volvo hatchbacks were such safe cars. Nobody who drove them ever went over thirty miles per hour, and if they were ever involved in an accident they rarely sustained any injuries because at the first signs of braking a whole plethora of velvet cushions and tartan knee rugs are thrown forward, smothering the driver and thus preventing serious injury. Volvo hatchbacks don’t come with an air bag, they have an old bag with plenty of soft-furnishings.

My car was eventually sold to an elderly lady, who seemed thrilled by the thought of vehicular torpor, and I went out and did something reckless. The Landrover was not a practical car for me, but it was cheap, and I loved the thought of being able to drive a car that I could take apart as easily as one of the Meccano kits that I had as a girl. It didn’t go above fifty miles per hour, handled like a cart being pulled by two Samoan weightlifters, and guzzled petrol; but it had character. I found I could forgive all of its little idiosyncrasies because on a hot day with the roof off it was the coolest thing on the road. I cherished my Landy, with its push button start and manual wiper blades; I spent hours in a barn with an ex-Royal Marine mechanic, lovingly adjusting its tappets, fitting a new head gasket and replacing all the bits that had worn out over the years. The Landrover became a part of me, and when I became pregnant and had to buy a more practical car I refused to be parted from it, and so it was put away in the barn, to be brought out on high days and holidays.

I got used to driving an ordinary car again, and soon my elderly Vauxhall Astra became a typical young-mother’s car - full of rubbish, with mouldy seats that smelled of old milk spilled from cups dropped from the hands of sleepy children. Tommie Tippy just couldn’t contain the warm beverages that my girls insisted on splashing over the car’s soft furnishings, and eventually the smell became so bad that I had to drive with all the windows open. In summertime it came as a welcome relief to be able to pull back the barn doors and roll out the green beast for its summer work detail. We had no roof on the Landy and no door tops, and I lost count of all the sun hats that went flying off the heads of visiting children. Trips to the beach were synonymous with windswept hair, weekend guests, towels and buckets, spades and sun lotion. The Landrover had more than enough room for everyone, and at the end of the day we could all pile back in and drive up to the little teashop in the field above Mothercombe beach, for a can of coke or a toffee crumble ice lolly. In the autumn it would be used to take rubbish to the tip and to bring logs in from the lane, and then when it’s work was done, we’d put it away like the Blue Peter tortoise in a dry, warm barn until springtime.

Last year I took my girls back to Mothercombe beach, and I have a picture of them curled up in the back of the Landrover, shaded by towels and gently snoozing in the late afternoon sun. The teashop still sells toffee crumble ice lollies and little old ladies that work behind the counter are just as slow and delightful as ever. The Landrover and I had been through a lot together; it always started after its winter lay-off, and even at forty five years of age the engine ran as sweetly as the day I first got it. But I couldn’t hang onto it forever, and now it belongs to a man from a nearby town, who bought it to take his family on trips to the beach. He won’t be able to buy toffee crumble ice lollies, because to my knowledge they are only sold by Doris and Edith at the Mothercombe tea shop, but I hope the ancient Landy will fill his life with as many wonderful memories as it has mine.

All that now remains of my cherished work beast is a large patch of oil on the barn floor. Slowly but surely the remnants of my old life are disappearing, to be replaced by tools to equip me for a new life. The bright, white laptop that I bought with the cash from the sale, is primed and ready to be taken with us on holiday, and I hope that it will prove to be just as lasting and worthy an investment as its big, green predecessor.



© Kate Boydell 2004. All rights reserved. e-mail: [email protected]. Close window.