Cars

I was brought up in an era of mechanical unreliability. Cars were always breaking down, punctures were commonplace, engines consumed and leaked oil, a grease gun was part of the maintenance kit, and passengers were sometimes required to help push a car up steep hills. So just to make cars work was part of life, despite the advertisements of the day showing happy people driving around an ideal countryside with hair in the slipstream and smiles on faces. It was not usually like that.

I suppose because they needed so much attention, and there were comparatively few cars about, they seemed to form personalities of their own, sometimes volatile ones. You loved them or hated them, but you could not ignore them. Or if you did so, it was at your peril. Even people with no bent for mechanical matters, soon acquired some essential knowledge of how cars worked and how to deal with trouble.

A good example was my first car, a twenty year old 1929/1930 MG Type M Midget, given to me by a cousin. It was open, sporty, and just the kind enjoyed by girl friends - except when it broke down. I had to learn how to cure an oil leak from its overhead camshaft, about its SU carburettor, the Autovac, and how to treat the slipping clutch by squirting fluid from its Pyrene fire extinguisher into the clutch housing. To own it was an adventure too far. So, as it had been a gift, I gave it away to a Norfolk family of friends, where it may still languish in a shed or barn.

 My brother was an engineer who knew a man who made up Austin 7 cars from bits of others. I asked if he would make me a sporting version, which he did. Two seats, crab-tracked, lousy brakes, and hot exhaust burns if you were not careful when climbing in or out, it was a fun car, except when I was once just managing to pass a lorry of cows when one of them relieved herself and soaked me.

Then came a wedding where I entertained fellow ushers on the way to the reception, when a lamp-post jumped out in front of me. I left the car where it fell. Recovered somehow, it became unstable at speed. Not even Colin Chapman, of Lotus, could find anything wrong. So I sold it to a suited man from the City with fear that he might sue me for something. He did telephone to ask about some aspect of the car. I asked how fast he had managed to take it, to be told that it was something like 35 miles per hour. 

I was painting from nature, often from the banks of rivers. And selling the results rather well. So I thought that a vehicle in which I could transport a fibreglass pram dinghy would be an ideal way to explore and paint river scenes. It might also be good as a camper. So I had a coach builder make a body to fit onto a Volkswagen flat-back. It was a job to handle the dinghy in and out of the van, and river banks often consist of deep mud. It was a failure and had to go.

As a stage designer I was asked to join a man, called van Bunnens, to paint pantomime scenery on ice. It was a cold job but I had retained my wartime flying boots. At least my feet were warm. The pay was good and I had spare time to buy a clapped-out builder's Ford 8 flat-back, and create a streamlined body with ply and canvas roof. In mind was a camping grand tour of Europe. As this proposed journey was in the summer, and hot, I fixed two air scoops on to the roof - the kind of ventilators on old-fashioned ships to cool the boiler room. When wet, the scoops would be turned to point backward and two corks sealed them off. I added a mighty air-blasting horn (the kind used in intercontinental lorries), a compass and an aircraft altimeter that told of the car's altitude and also acted as the weather forecasting barometer. The seat of canvas-covered foam rubber was canted up in the front, and the back rest leant backward. It was made to measure (for me) and extremely comfortable. For liquid effluent a funnel lead to a tube that lead to the road beneath.

Toward the end of the grant tour, the engine was reluctant to start in the mornings. So it was necessary to park for the night on steep downward slopes for a rolling start each day - which also meant me sleeping at the same angle as the car.

Although the space in the wheel arches that I gave for the wheels to rise over bumps in England were quite adequate, for the dreadful roads in Europe at that time (1952) they were not. So, often the smell of scoured rubber would follow the noise of tyres hitting the wooden wheel arches. Yet, after three months and three days, with 5,227 miles of driving on the clock, there was no sign of wear on the Michelin tyres. I sold the car to a titled Scottish laird, and for all I know that car is still frightening the hell out of highland sheep.

The Citroen 2 CV that I next owned I loved for its simplicity and originality. Air-cooling was sensible, centrifugal clutch, clever. The suspension, when the front wheels told the rear ones what to expect, was mightily original, even if it tilted the bodywork when negotiating a corner. And if one changed the two spark plugs each autumn, it started first time in all weathers.

Needing a bit more space for painting kit I moved on to an Ami 8. This was simply a 2 CV with a station wagon body. Rust was its only problem.

A Volkswagen Golf Cabriolet came next. And what a lovely car it was - in all weathers. The only snag was driving through pools of water of unknown depth in the road. A good splash allowed water to reach the electronics, when the engine stopped. I gave it to a son who, I believe, crashed it.

Lastly came an automatic Toyota RAV 4. This is still in the family. And after 24 years of life on the road has not missed a beat.

So, from a 1929 MG M Series to the automatic RAV 4, I have experience not only a lot of highs and lows, but the pleasure of seeing an enormous advance in automotive engineering. 

Food and Wine (haphazard, meandering recollections) Part 2

 I used to plan solo trips through France, Spain and Italy to pass through or stay in wine-growing areas, making notes on the growing of vines, their grapes and the results of vinification methods. My notes were to help me eventually establish a vineyard in England.

To eat I would buy a drink at a well-established café and ask the waiter to where he would take his family out for a meal. It was a great way to discover sometimes unmarked establishments that might not have a menu or even cost of dishes displayed. But they would invariably be excellent and modestly priced. 

One meal started with a dozen oysters, another with cauliflower, garlic and toasted breadcrumbs. Yet another set out with some raw baby artichokes, which I had no idea about how to tackle. I still wouldn't. And so on.

I now find the ordinary wines of Bordeaux to be disappointing. It is extraordinary how the same area can produce among the finest wines in the world (at a price) and also some of the dullest. But I was there in happier times and took up residence in Bas Médoc (now just Médoc). My room was a hut at the edge of woodland, and when asking where I might find 'le toilette', was directed in the general direction of the trees. The establishment actually did have such a facility, but it was, shall we say, nasty.

Food of a good simple kind was available, but only if either the mother or daughter of the establishment were not occupied with more carnal skills. The house red wine (practically no white was made in the region at this time) was delicious. It came from the co-operative in Prignac. I went to investigate to find a winery thick with fruit flies. But I ordered a hogshead to be shipped to London, where we bottled it and drank a red that coloured the mouth and tongue a bright purple colour. It was delicious. To import a hogshead of wine from France in those days was comparatively easy, but not a bone. Having enjoyed a wonderful rib of beef in a railway station café I asked if I could take the bone back to England for a dog. NON. The law about taking food away from restaurants forbade it. But by underhand means I did get the bone back, much to the dog's delight.

It was much later, when I had established two experimental vineyards and gathered enough information of growing grapes and choosing and importing wine that I started to write on the subject for newspapers and magazines. In so doing and sending my printed words to the people who mattered, I was asked to join an elite band of writers on wine.

I was now invited to travel and eat and drink wine in opulence. But whereas my fellows were interested in the upper layers of the market, I was concentrating on the lower end. So with the grand offerings I asked to taste the local 'ordinaires' - sometimes lowering the tone, I fear. My wines were of interest to the supermarket buyers, and it was for them and their supermarket consumers that I was writing. This was a great learning curve for myself and for those who read my columns. Actually, the high life did have its drawbacks. Nouvelle cuisine was in vogue. After a meal, when we might have been offered such as a prawn in a sea of blackcurrant juice with a few sage leaves floating around in it, it seemed obligatory to shake the chef's clammy hand as he walked around the table to be congratulated.

It was seeing grapes entering a winery in Cahors that were covered with blue copper spray that determined me to find grape varieties that needed no spray at all. I managed this before giving up wine-writing, also at a time when others realised that their readers did not all drink fine wine.

But not all venues for us privileged writers were grand. In Pisa we were taken to a sort of souvenir shop near to the leaning tower that had a small restaurant at the rear. That was when the only wine on offer was local, which was delicious and just the kind I like.

When on my own in Italy and determined to reach Certaldo where Boccaccio sheltered from the plague and wrote the Decameron, I not only found the lovely villa on a hilltop, but saw that in almost every doorway sat old ladies weaving rushes around Chianti fiascos. I bought two large ones for washing water. By soaking the rushes in water the contents of the bottles cooled down by the latent heat of evaporation.

Later, in Sienna, I was given most wonderful red wine made by the patron's family of the café were I was eating. So I returned to my camping kind of car - a vehicle that I designed for the voyage - emptied the fiascos of their water and had it replaced with the café's red wine.

With the old car breaking down every so often in Spain and Italy it was a lovely experience to meet helpers and kind people with natural mechanical skills. 

That was the way it was.

My writing on wine needed no expert knowledge, unlike my fellow wine writers. But over the years I had kept my eyes open with a view to one day establishing a vineyard. I had tasted many a wine and imported quite a lot in cask from France and Spain to bottle at home, study and drink. I possessed an acute sense of smell - for wine and even people. And I had written several books on the subject and countless articles with the theme of "wine is natural and healthy, Let's learn together".

Of course wine and food can be treated in a most exulted manner by anyone. But really wine is just a very nice drink with food and food with wine - especially in Italy when one seems to be made to go with the other. Any wine you like will surely go with any food you like. Balance is necessary. Your body accepts it and will be tolerant, as mine has been for 95 years.