Driven to Distraction

When my father got his first car, driving tests were suspended due to the Suez Crisis, and learners were allowed to drive unaccompanied.

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We, being Nanna, Mother and I, eagerly went out in the car with him for the Sunday afternoon drive that people enjoyed then. Maybe to local bluebell or primrose woods where we could pick them indiscriminately. Later in life, my father told me how scared he was, driving us all, as a learner.

The arrival of a car in our lives meant we could drive from Kent to Scotland. At that time there was no motorway, so we usually made it to the Carlisle area the first night. My parents had met at a dance during the war when he was in the army and stationed near Dumbarton, West Dunbartonshire. My mother, being Scottish, and my father, being English, married in 1946 after he returned from India. Some time before I was born in 1949, Nanna (my maternal grandmother) came to live with us permanently. She had been widowed for the second time in 1948.

For several years, we went to Scotland to visit family and friends. We went on alternate years. The other years we did day trips in Kent to save money for the trips to Scotland. I remember the friends of the family were called “Aunty” or “Uncle”, so I did not know who our blood relatives were. We would travel around various towns in Scotland visiting the families.

I also remember seeing people in the old tenement buildings, where there was a communal toilet inside for several residents to share. An unusual feature was beds in the living rooms that pulled down from the wall. In fact, I later learned my mother had slept in one until her marriage, aged 24, having no bedroom to herself.

Whenever we travelled, we stayed in B&Bs. It never crossed my parents’ minds to go to a hotel - it was not “for the likes of us”. B&Bs gave us modest accommodation with a lovely full breakfast included at an affordable price.