Skip to main content

Classic Cars

  There was a classic car rally in Aldeburgh today. Down where the ice-cream van is parked during the summer.  The one Coochie Maltman used to deal from. I thought at first he might be a freemason, noticing the sideways-on handshakes going across the Mr Whippy counter. But, no, as Gerard explained, Coochie was your man if you wanted something buzzier with your cornet than a flake. 'And whatever the working class versions are of chopped pistachios or raspberry coulis, sweets.'
  There was a Vauxhall Zephyr among the cars, like the one my dad used to own before his driving was legal, insured and under the limit. I thought how compact it was.  Dad's had looked vast to my six-year-old self. And how primly it seemed to be sitting up on its wheels. Dad's had brooded languorously. 
  Car owners milled around thanking each other for coming and saying not to forget such and such a date in such and such a place for the next meet up. The numerical breakdown of specific models represented reminded me of the hierarchy in a ballet company. The many: the corps de ballet. The few: the soloists. The one: the prima ballerina assoluta. At the rally were many Morris Minors and Minis. There were fewer sports cars: a TR7, for example, or a Ford Mustang. And there was the one: a white 1960 Cadillac Eldorado Seville. 


                            Was too in awe to take a pic of the one today...



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

     I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media:   We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden.  He's between tour dates of  The Bodyguard,  and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements.  The latter, he says, being all about making his product better.   Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February.  I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters.  That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world.  That's why you've been noticing the combat photos.  I've been going for tr

Some Favourite Books - But Please don't Lesbify Dame Agatha's Denouements

  I'm too tired to read anything new so have been round the libraries taking out my default-setting books to read over Christmas. These include:    The Pursuit of Love , Nancy Mitford.   The blood-stained entrenching tool displayed above the fireplace, child-hunting over Shenley Common, Jassy traumatising the local children telling them the facts of life.  The scene at the Gare du Nord where Linda sits on her luggage to cry and meets Fabrice always takes me back to the first reading of the novel, sitting wrapped in my Welsh Tweed shawl, in a tiny bedroom on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise in Kennington.   The Pursuit of Love is romantic, hilarious and bleakly eccentric.    Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady , Florence King. When I entertained troops on the American base in Kandahar, four South Carolina army captains made me an Honorary Southern Belle. Madame Galina, they said, in all her unreasonable, high-blooded, simpering flounce reminded them of the girls

Where Babies Come From...

Haberdashery Girls... An excerpt from my forthcoming book of interviews:   Where Babies Come From. I asked people, ‘How were you told the facts of life?’ And, ‘What information were you given?’ Here is Belinda, who used to be an escort.  She is now in her eighties. My sister read about Dutch caps.  We looked at Old Masters paintings and wondered how having those funny big white hats on their heads would stop women getting pregnant. In British Guiana, we had native servants who would do the deed al fresco au natural.  From the age of five, I was playing 'sex' with my dolls.  They’d have their dolls’ tea party, a recitation lesson, then I’d have them mount each other. When we came back to England, I had a nanny.   Katrin was fresh from the convent. She was all mummy could get for me.  I expect it was a time of general strikes.  Mummy would send Katrin for breaks back to the convent meanwhile sending me for remedial elocution.  This would happen when I’d said one too many ‘tinks’,