Never too old for your mother to look out for you. It is a funny and an endearing concept. Did your mother ever attempt to wipe something off your face with a wet hankie she had just spat into, as an adult?
I remember even as a grown man, if I was driving with my mum and she had to pull up suddenly, her left arm would come over to protect me.
I liked driving with my mum, she was a good driver. She would drive me around in her Saab. She knew how to hoof it along in traffic. Her favourite expression if she came up behind a slow driver, "Oh come on, get on, or get off."
She had 3 Saabs in our family’s life time. (she had a a green Holden first, which was the one I stood on the back seat as a toddler and said what became Fletcher lexicon, "Same model different colour" pointing at cars) A flesh coloured 99. She had a metalic green turbo 3 door 900, a result of her being somewhere, where, I can't remember, indisposed. (It must have been a big deal?) And dad and the (nearly grown) kids were in charge of the purchase. And there was a sale, or we got a good price, something about being loyal customers, I can't really remember now what dad told us to tell mum. But that is what we bought home. Us kids were thrilled.
Well, leadfoot Lottie was right at home behind the wheel of that little green beast, let me tell you. Hard working mum just having to make the commute from home to work and back, coming through.
"Just a hard working mum trying to make it home for dinner," Lottie would mumble as she slalomed the traffic, and took the orange traffic light with a squeal from the tyres, despite her protests about us not getting the predetermined car, initially.
Then she got herself a sensible maroon 4 door 900, which was heavily option on the creature comforts, a GLE, I think, rather than turbo. We wondered if that one was cursed. Mum had had it a number of weeks, when someone's foot slipped on an accelerator rather than a brake in some car park, and took out the whole drivers side off mum's new car. Lottie had literally put her purse down on the kitchen table, having just picked up the car from the repairer and there was a loud bang and the Hungarian grandmother from across the road, who we all knew liked a sherry, or two, misjudged backing her blue Pontiac out of the drive way of the house across the street, her foot hit the accelerator instead of the brake when she got into difficulty, the big Pontiac shot out into the street taking the driver's side of Lottie's car with it. In the first 6 months of ownership, Lottie had the car for 2 weeks.
We all missed the little green beast, even Lottie. She was heard to say out loud that she should have kept it.
We all learned to drive in Mum's Saab. I learnt with my dad in the green Cooper S.
My dad had several Toyota LandCruisers, grey and then beige and then white. And a Mini Cooper S. British racing Green, as well.
My dad drove me to school in either a Saab, a Landcruiser, or a Mini Cooper S. It was most fun in the Cooper S, as dad was always running late, so he was often screaming up to the front door with a minute to spare. And if you rush anywhere in the Cooper S, it is loud.
Something like a decade later, when I’d sold my MGB to make up the money to buy my first house, and was just starting to look around for a cheap car for the meantime, Lottie told me that dad had something to tell me.
“What?”
“Oh, just be patient and he will call.”
“When?”
“Soon,” said Lottie. “The next few days I’m sure, be patient, just wait.
And dad did call. He offered me his Cooper S cheap, really cheap. Good old mums.
As it turned out, Lottie had pointed out to him that he never drove it any way, any more. He’d had his fun with it, a thirty year love affair, and now it just took up a garage space, and if he gave it to me both of their cars could be put away in their garage.
I kept it for years. I had it all done up. Best car ever. And then I bought my first Peugeot – you know, aircon, cruise control, a music head unit, ABS brakes – and I put the Cooper S away under a tarp in storage. I’d drive it occasionally on weekends. It always put a smile on my face.
I stupidly sold it when my long term garage situation ceased to exist and I had nowhere to store it. Stupidest thing I ever did. I should have just rented a garage somewhere.
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