Cars I have owned - No 6: Morris Marina 1.3GL

Jeremy Clarkson called it the worst car ever made (it’s not) and the joke on Top Gear is to smash up a Morris Marina whenever one appears on the show. I think they’ve destroyed about four or five so far, which is a shame because there’s less than a thousand of them left.

The Marina was going to be one of the cars that saved the British motor industry. British Leyland had moved to a range that was entirely front-wheel drive and they had a troublesome reputation and were not considered robust enough in many export markets.

The Austin Allegro (nicknamed All-Aggro) had been a disaster and the Marina, which used the old Morris name (the last car to do so), was supposed to provide some quality and revive a much-loved badge which had been unused since the Morris Minor 1000 was discontinued. It was also rear-wheel drive and that was still a very popular format. The top-selling Cortina was RWD, so was the Escort MkII and first Vauxhall Cavalier.

Sad to say, the Marina wasn’t a great car. It was noisy, plasticky, unreliable and uncomfortable. It was also the worst-handling car I’ve ever owned. Plus points? The rear seats were actually quite comfortable and roomy, and the boot was reasonably large.

I’d taken the job of sports editor at the Peterborough Standard mainly because it came with a company car. That would have been around 1978 and, back then, a company car was a real perk - almost untaxed and free to use. There wasn’t even any need to put your own petrol in the car. Considering that buying and repairing a car was my largest expenditure apart from the house, this was a major consideration.

The Marina was S-reg, with maroon paintwork (probably called dark tulip) and light brown interior. When the keys were handed to me, I was disappointed to find that it was not brand new and even more disappointed to be told that it had to go into the body shop soon because the previous user’s wife had crunched the back door.

It took the shine off my new perk - but at least I wasn’t footing the repair bill.

In fairness, the Marina was soon fixed and they did a good job. Also, it was being changed the following year as Sharman & Co (the company I’d gone to work for) had a policy of swapping company cars every two years.

From the outside, the Marina was a wedge-shape, but with an ugly, bulbous rear end and a front that seemed artificially low. Driving the car, there was a heavy bias towards understeer; it always wanted to go straight on and you’d get no feedback at all from the rear end, which is extraordinary for a rear-wheel-drive car. There was no balance to the car, it felt as if you were fighting to get it to go around a bend and the steering was so heavy that parking needed good, strong muscles. It also suffered from excessive body roll and not progressive, predictable roll like a Renault - this bugger tended to lurch to the side. Suspension was torsion bars at the front and leaf springs with a live rear axle - stagecoach technology.

Incredible as it seems, with so much going against it, the Marina was a popular car with the British public. It came close to beating the Cortina one year and was regularly in the top three or four best-selling cars. I have to say that it never let me down and we were able to make a few trips back home to Cheshire, including, sadly, to the funeral of Margaret’s father Norman. Back then, we used to take the A47 to Leicester, then the A6 up to Kegworth, through Derby, Stoke and pick up the M6 at Stoke south. It would take four hours, although 10 years later, route refinements, new roads and bypasses meant we could do it in two-and-a-half hours.

The only journey I can really remember in the car was a trip to York with my wife Margaret and my sister Margaret plus her husband Mick. We were all without children back then and I’d gone to cover a football match between York and Peterborough. We’d decided to make a day of it and I guess that I remember it because the Marina engine was getting hotter and hotter cruising at 70mph on the A1. There were minimal instruments in the car, but it did have a large, clear temperature gauge for engine coolant and this was edging towards the red danger zone. Lifting off to about 60mph brought it back to normal, so I spent the entire journey of three hours or so pushing the speed up, then easing off as the temperature rose. The other thing I remember is wandering round York trying to find this vegetarian cafe they’d heard about. They were both vegetarian and in those days it was a nightmare to eat out. We eventually found the place, it was small, grotty, terrible service and little choice. I ended up with broccoli crumble or something disgusting - should have had a pie at Bootham Crescent!

The engine was the old A-Series four cylinder, which pushed out 60bhp. It was quite hard worked in a large-ish car like the Marina, but it was fairly economical and there was a decent mid-range spread of torque.

There were no head restraints, but it did have a radio. I particularly remember a few things about the car:

• it had ridiculously short seats and they were also set at a poor angle, so you got no thigh support and it was uncomfortable on long journeys. OK for short drivers, but not for me!
• The windscreen wipers were set on the wrong side (as if for a left-hand-drive car) so the top right of the windscreen was unswept. It was even worse if you were tall (I’m beginning to think the guy who designed the Marina was 5ft 3in.
• Mine was a GL or SL model which meant very little except it got a bit of bling here and there. One of the features were full wheel-trims and these came in two parts - an outer ring and a chrome hubcap that clipped onto the wheel and held the outer ring in place. The outer rings weren’t a snug fit into the wheel and so they’d move up and down if you were driving slowly and make an annoying noise like a cymbal clashing. It took me a while to work out what it was that caused the noise and once I had, I took off the outer trim rings and chucked them in the garage.

The Marina wasn’t a great car, I couldn’t even say it was a good car, but it certainly wasn’t the worst car ever built (Jeremy Clarkson has probably never driven a Lada). I wasn’t sorry to see it go and the next car on my list, a Talbot Horizon 1.1 LS was considerably better.

Also see:

Ford Popular - click

Bedford HA Van - click

Morris Mini - click

Vauxhall Viva HC - click

Citroen GS Club - click

The Great Garden Birdwatch

I’ve spent an hour this morning doing the RSPB Great Garden Birdwatch - it’s a very pleasant way to spend some time on a sunny morning.

Garden Birdwatch day must be like Christmas day in the avian calendar (or it would be if birds had a calendar). There’s a lot of competition among spotters to get their numbers up, so all kinds of tasty treats go on the bird table.

Those not prepared to lavish mealworm and other delicacies on the local robin population risk being shunned in favour of more generous recorders.

Well, I’ve been caught out before, so this year my feeders were primed with the finest sunflower seed, the fattest peanuts I could find, some ground mix for those twitterers too full to hang from a feeder and - the champagne truffle of the bird world - a scattering of mealworms.

My hour got off to a good start when Margaret spotted an unusual bird on the trunks of the conifers by the patio. Normally, Margaret’s unusual birds turn out to be be wood pigeons, but this time she struck gold - she’d spotted a tree creeper from the kitchen window. He was working his way up the bare trunks, examining the cracks in the bark for insects and grubs. He spent a good few minutes searching the trees - tree creeper was a first for me in the Garden Birdwatch.

This year, it wasn’t very busy and the usual suspects turned up for a free feed. Everything went very quiet about halfway through the hour and I was wondering why when I spotted a large kestrel sitting in the top of the walnut tree at the bottom of the garden. He was looking for a tasty meal, but all the tasty meals had hidden themselves in the hawthorn hedge.

This year’s bird watch was notable for the appearance of the tree creeper, but it was also interesting for a number of absences. There was no wood pigeon anywhere, no starlings, no thrushes and no house sparrows (although their browner, duller cousins, the Dunnock were the most numerous).

This was my count:

Dunnock 6
Chaffinch 4
Blackbird 3
Robin 2
Blue tit 2
Greenfinch 2
Great tit 2
Collared dove 1
Tree creeper 1

My resolution is somewhat lacking

In January 2012, like thousands of other people, I made a number of new year resolutions. Being a new blogger, I decided to share them with the wider world.

“The beginning of the year is a good time to set out what we want to achieve during the year. I have this daft idea that, if I write them down and share them with others, they will be easier to achieve,” I said.

Expect progress reports during the course of 2012 … I promised.

Of course, I didn’t give any progress reports at all and (like all people with new year resolve) I promptly forgot all promises. So what I'm doing now is a bit of a scary exercise - just how well have I managed to perform against the targets I set myself in January 2012?

Resolution No 1 - what I said: I will lose weight: I guess this is on the list of 75 per cent of people’s new year resolutions. I gained a stone (14 lbs) every seven years between the ages of 21 and 49 and I’ve been chugging along at 15 st (210 lbs/95.5 kg) since then. I don’t feel bad, but truth is that it’s a bit too heavy and I know that I eat far too many biscuits and far too much chocolate, crisps, nuts and alcohol.

I started 2012 hovering around 15st and I finished the year hovering around 15st. The government has now revised its BMI classifications, so I’m just overweight rather than obese. It’s hardly a great endorsement for my willpower - they moved the goalposts and I just scraped through. Not achieved.

Resolution No 2: Losing weight will entail cutting down on the chocolate (cutting it out altogether if the plan doesn’t work), eating no salted peanuts and only the odd biscuit. I will eat more fruit and eat only bread that I’ve made myself. I’ve been making bread from spelt flour to a recipe dating back to the Romans. It’s very tasty, gluten free and is a wholemeal product so it fills you up for longer and is better for your digestion.

Oh dear! I didn’t cut down on chocolate and I didn’t cut it out altogether when the diet fell behind target. In fact, I can’t believe I made that promise - what was I thinking? I have reduced salted peanuts to a rare treat, but probably filled the gap with extra biscuits. As the the spelt bread, I have half a dozen bags of spelt flour sitting in my cupboard, which is a sad testament to that promise. Most of the time just lately, I don’t even eat wholemeal bread. Not achieved.

Resolution No 3: I will have at least three drink-free days per week and I’ll aim to make it four most weeks. I’ve got into the habit of having a glass of wine, a gin and tonic (or two) every day and it is a habit. I will try to drink to socialise and not just for the sake of having a drink.

I think you’ll guess what happened here ... I have cut down, but it’s more like two free days on average rather than three. Lots of people have given up alcohol for January - not me. Not achieved

Resolution no 4: I will exercise more. Time is always against me, but walking is the key to improving fitness and I’ll try to walk from Victoria to King’s Cross at least three times per week. It’s hard in the morning because I’m often pushed for time. However, I’ll do my best and also strive to give the dogs a couple of good four milers at the weekend. I’ve been walking them across the fen to Old Knarr Fen Road and back the same way. That means Gravel has maximum time off lead and a really good run. It seems to have paid dividends – Margaret and I can see a difference with his doggy waistline even after just a few weeks.

We’ve had more success with Gravel than with me. Finding time to walk in the morning is an issue, so I decided to use the Boris Bikes. That was working well until half the roads in London were closed for the Olympics and I was forced to cycle through Parliament Square which is super scary. I’ve walked the dogs, but nesting lapwings spoiled the fen walk until late June and jobs in the garden meant weekends were time scarce. Part achieved.

Resolution No 5: I will buy a motorcycle – not sure which one or how much I will spend, but I will get another modern bike. I will also strive to get the two classics back on the road this year. I just need to make more time. I’ve really missed having a modern bike. The classics are a good idea, but they’re more for tinkering with than for riding. I wish I hadn’t sold the GS, but then I wish that I hadn’t sold every bike I’ve ever owned. You should never sell a motorcycle; stick it in the back of the garage if you’re not using it. They always come in sometime and the Lambretta SX200 I had when I was 16 would now be worth about four grand! I’d really like a BMW R1200ST, but we’ll have to see how the bonus pans out. I’m watching this month’s (and the year’s) figures very carefully.

Got maximum bonus and subsequently bought a BMW R1200ST in April. Achieved in full - this one was easy!

Resolution No 6: I will get on top of work. It has been a really hard year. There have been so many distractions and so many people leaving that we seem to have been doing more fire-fighting than properly planned campaigns. I think we’re now getting a really good team together and a few extra hands, so I really hope this year will be more structured and I’ll be able to do the role I am supposed to be doing. I’ve not got that many more years until I retire and I’d like to enjoy the last few and feel that I’ve really achieved some things.

It has been a better year, I’ve worked a bit smarter most of the time and we’ve had a more settled team. Achieved in full

Resolution No 7: I will be nicer to people in London. It isn’t easy because London really does bring out the worst in you. I will try not to push people on the Tube and I will try not to kick pull-along cases. I pushed a nun last year, not hard, just enough to get her out of the way. Mind you, she had just come out of the station entrance stopped dead and was talking on her mobile phone (probably lost and asking directions, poor soul).

I’ve worked really hard at this. London is so full of rude, awful people that it’s very difficult. I have stood my ground and I have not given way when people have pushed in front of me, but I have been admirably restrained and haven’t kicked one pull-along case all year, not even the gay little lap-top pull-alongs that wimpy blokes seem to have. Achieved pretty bloody well!

Resolution No 8: I will enjoy my garden. We have worked hard in the garden this year and we’ve spent a good £4-5K on summerhouse, decking, sets, bricks, pots, furniture! 2012 is the year we get payback – we can sit and enjoy it. Here’s hoping for a nice summer!

Well it started raining in early May and it didn’t really stop until the start of this week, when it started snowing! I have kept up with the garden and it’s been really nice most of the year (see http://ericsdailydiary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/my-garden-through-seasons.html for evidence). We’ve hardly had the chiminea lit or the barbecue sparked. We’ve not been in the summerhouse much and the patio furniture has grown a layer of green mould. Not achieved (but I did enjoy my garden even if it was wet).

Resolution No 9: I will see more of my family. Family history work has also taught me to appreciate my current family more. We will visit the children in London; I see them regularly and often stay over, but Margaret hasn’t been to Tom’s since he got the house straight and she’s never been to Max’s new flat. I also want to visit my surviving aunts – Aunt Pam, Aunt Margaret and Aunt Joyce – and talk to them about my mother and father. It would be good to record that conversation and perhaps get Tom in tow, so that he could video it. How amazing would it be to have had some video of my dad, let alone grandparents or great grandparents?

Margaret has been down to London every couple of months, she’s seen Max’s flat, visited Tom’s a couple of times and also been to Sam’s. I haven’t seen Aunt Pam or my Yorkshire aunts and we bailed out of a trip to France to see Graham and a trip to Northwich for a Katie homecoming party. Margaret hasn’t seen Lizzie for 18 months. We need to try harder. Part achieved.

In praise of winter tyres

A snowy house and car this morning

This is my third winter with a rear-wheel-drive car (and one with high-performance tyres). It’s not that I have a high-performance car, but because it’s a BMW, they fit high-rated tyres with a sports tread.

Great for grip on warm tarmac, but combined with rear-wheel drive, pretty useless for the two weeks of an English winter when it snows.

And snow it has for the past two winters! I almost had winter tyres fitted last year, but the snow was quite late - February - and I thought I’ll only have the tyres on for a few weeks before it was spring.

This year, we’re taking the car to the Isere Valley for a skiing holiday and so I decided to have winter tyres fitted good and early.

KwikFit had the option of some really cheap winter tyres (made in Italy) at about £100 each, some Japanese-made tyres at £150 each or Dunlops (made in Germany) at £223 each. KwikFit said they were all good, but the Dunlops looked to have a much better tread pattern and they were on a four-for-three offer, so I had them fitted. Total price, with wheel balance, new valves and nitrogen inflation (and VAT) £721.

It’s expensive, but it should (of course) be cost neutral. When I have the winter tyres on, I’m not wearing out my summer tyres, so I’m saving there. I can only wear out one set at a time.

Anyway, a nice young lady tyre-fitter put them on, did a good job of cleaning the corrosion from the front, offside alloy wheel which always lets a bit of air out around the rim, and I slung the summer tyres in the back and stacked them in the garage ready for refitting come April.

I could feel a difference straight away. The ride was better because I was now on standard tyres, not run-flats like my summer tyres, which have a much stiffer sidewall. I’ve not noticed any difference in fuel consumption (around 40-45mpg) and the tyres don’t sound any noisier on a motorway.

We’d not had a bad winter, wet but not too cold, until this past fortnight and the tyres have now really come into their own. The grip had been noticeably better when the road is cold and wet, or a little frosty. I hit a patch of ice on Bourges Boulevard heading to the station the other morning. On the summer tyres, it would have really let go and then gripped, but with the winter tyres it was a steady slide, I could feel it going and correct every so gently. A similar thing happened coming off the roundabout onto The Causeway into Thorney. I just felt the back end coming round ever so slightly; I just eased off and it came back in line.

On Friday it snowed heavily and Chestnut Drive was covered in snow. Coming home from the station, I put my foot down in second to see if the wheels would spin, but they didn’t. The traction-control light didn’t even flicker. On summer tyres, it would have been on/off, on/off. I then tried braking quite hard, not an emergency stop, but so hard that I knew the standard tyres would have lost grip. The car just stopped, no judder at all to suggest the ABS had kicked in.

I thought this was quite impressive on two or three inches of snow.

The tyres are not going to tempt me into taking risks, but if I know I have reliable grip, I will drive a bit faster. Is that lulling me into a false sense of security? It might be, but only if the grip suddenly goes, which it would on ice, but then so would any tyre, except a studded one.

On Sunday, heavy snow was forecast in London, spreading north during the afternoon. We’d planned to go to Sam’s and did so despite the weather. It was his 30th birthday on Thursday, we had his presents and I’d baked him a cake. It was quite snowy on the way down and continued to snow heavily all afternoon. We left about 4pm, with roads starting to whiten over. On the hill from Stroud Green to Crouch End, I was being followed by a VW 4x4 and when I stopped to let a bus through, I saw him brake and lose control. Fortunately, he steered sideways into the kerb and not into my back. From Crouch End up to Muswell Hill there is (as the name suggests) quite a steep hill. The road was fairly clear and I took it steadily in second at about 20mph. It’s a narrow road with traffic parked and side roads, plus crossings, so it’s not a hill you can take a run at.

Halfway up a BMW saloon had stopped, its rear wheels spinning uselessly and sliding slowly back down. I was able to slow and steer around it. We passed a Mercedes which had also given up and was being gamely pushed by a couple of blokes (good luck to them). Steering around these obstacles had slowed me down, so I had to engage first and was now stuck behind a front-wheel-drive Peugeot 3009, which had also lost momentum and it was slithering about like a dog on wet lino, front-wheels spinning like mad. I was worried because the hill is steeper there, so I fed the clutch in slowly and kept the throttle as low as possible. The car sailed up, no traction-control light, absolutely no wheelspin.

On the A1, there was a fine covering of sometimes slushy, sometimes soft, sometimes crunchy snow. I know from experience, that I would have had to slow right down on the summer tyres and would have been having kittens even then. I was nervous, but nowhere near so much, and had to be alert because visibility wasn’t great, but the car was rock solid - no side slides, no skidding under braking (ABS didn’t kick in once) and no wheelspin.

Some people’s winter driving skills are dreadful. People drive too close, some folk just have no idea about how long it will take them to stop or how to avoid wheelspin. The VW driver was an idiot, thank god me missed me; the Peugeot driver was being much too heavy on the throttle, but having used winter tyres myself and felt the difference they make, I’d say with confidence that, if everyone fitted them, the BBC would have to look really, really hard for some video of a car spinning its wheels and having to be pushed started.

And why wouldn’t people fit them? It’s no extra cost long term. You’ll really notice the difference when it’s snowy, but even in cold or cold and wet conditions, winter tyres significantly shorten your stopping distances in an emergency. I’m a convert; I’ll be at KwikFit every October getting my winter rubber on.

They may have a harsher test in the French Alps, where we have a very steep road up to our chalet, but I’ll have a secret weapon in the glovebox - my AutoSock. I hope I don’t need it, but if I do, I’ll give a full report.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston, Massachusetts (1809).

His poem "The Raven" is one of his best-known works, and it is also one of the most popular poems in the English language. Even people who have no interest in poetry can usually recite a line or two.

It's narrated by a studious young man who is mourning the loss of his lover, Lenore. When a talking raven visits him on a bleak December night, we follow his descent from amusement into madness.

At the time he was writing the poem, Poe's young wife, Virginia, was slowly dying of tuberculosis. Poe may have gotten the idea for a talking raven from a Dickens novel: Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty (1841). There was a talking raven in the Dickens book too, but it didn't bear much resemblance to the sinister bird of Poe's poem.

Poe brought the poem to his friend George Rex Graham, hoping he would publish it in Graham's Magazine. Graham turned him down, but gave him $15 anyway. The American Review agreed to publish it, and paid the poet $9. It appeared in the magazine's February 1845 issue, under the name Quarles. It was also published around that time in the Evening Mirror under Poe's name.

"The Raven" was an instant sensation and made Poe a household word. One critic called it subtle, ingenious, and imaginative, and predicted, "It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it."

Over the next several months, "The Raven" appeared in journals throughout the country and it was such a rousing success that Wiley and Putnam published two of Poe's books that year: a collection of prose called Tales and alsoThe Raven and Other Poems (1845). That was his first book of poetry in 14 years.

The Raven (excerpt)

by Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,"

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

This is taken by Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. If you enjoy books and poetry, take a look at it here: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Also check out: clubuldepresatransatlantic.wordpress.com/.../transatlantic-poetry-arc. More information and ideas exchange on Edgar Allan Poe. See comment below for other language links.

Why Isn't There an Airline Called Cunard?

News at the start of this week that two of the biggest remaining high-street brands - HMV and Jessops - have gone into liquidation. At the end of the week, they were followed by Blockbusters.

Jessops sold cameras, telescopes and binoculars; HMV was a music store and Blockbusters was video and games rental. All three are victims of a changing market and of that market moving online.

It’s an issue that also affects publishing and when I was regional director for Northcliffe Electronic Publishing, I used to give a talk to newspaper editors and advertising executives entitled Why Isn’t There an Airline Called Cunard?

The message I wanted to get across was that the nature of markets may change, but needs change less so. Cunard was a key player in transporting people around the world. When my Great Aunt Annie went to California to visit friends in 1963, she went by Cunard liner from Southampton. Back then, that was the way to do it, but people still need to cross the Atlantic (more than ever, in fact) and if Aunt Annie went today, she’d fly with Virgin or British Airways.

Why didn’t Cunard see that the market was moving from ships to aeroplanes and start investing in air travel? Perhaps it saw itself as a ship-owner (which it was) but should have seen itself as a service provider and concentrated on providing the service - travel - in the way that people wanted to consume it. If it had, it could have levered its brand trust and value into an airline and become the leading player in an expanded travel market.

Newspapers were (and some still are) in the same mind-set as Cunard. Bosses thought they were newspaper publishers but didn’t realise that they were really information providers and that the newspaper was simply a good way for people to consume that information at a point in time. So the focus remained on printing and selling newspapers far longer than it should have done. If all the money spent on presses and promotion in the past 15 years had been spent on IT, then mainstream media (the traditional newspaper publishers) would be in a healthier state than they are now.

I once said to the MD at Bristol that rather than installing new presses, he should buy everyone in Bristol a PC and internet access. he thought I was joking, but we could easily have done a deal with Hewlett-Packard (based in Bristol) plus Telewest, the cable company, and Bristol would have become the digital capital of the UK. Instead, he spent millions on new presses, which were scrapped 10 years later and the paper is now printed in Swindon, 50 miles away.

It’s somewhat ironic therefore that Simon Fox, former chief executive of HMV and the man charged with turning that business around, was appointed chief executive of Trinity-Mirror (one of the UK’s biggest regional newspaper groups) last August. Let’s hope that his current strategic thinking has been enriched by his experience at HMV.

It would have been so easy for HMV to do what Amazon or iTunes have done and I should now be buying my music through their online store. What online store, you ask - exactly! I’ve been buying music all my life and I’m buying more music now than ever before and I suspect other people are too. It’s almost criminal that HMV should fail as a music seller in a market where more and more music is being consumed.

It’s an interesting (or perhaps not) journey through technology to look at how I’ve consumed music over the past 50-odd years. The first record I bought was a 78rpm disc of A Slow Boat to China by Emile Ford and the Checkmates. I bought it from Dawsons, which was next to the library in High Street, Northwich, and it was very exciting. It must have been around 1960 and we’d been given a second-hand radio and record player, which I soon claimed pretty much as my own. Before then, we’d had a wind-up gramophone which came from my grandfather and had never been used. It was in a wooden cabinet with a lid that lifted to reveal a turntable operated by a wind-up spring. This would once have driven a large paper speaker which sat in the cabinet below. When you wanted to listen to music, you wound it up put a record on and opened the doors. A diaphragm in the pick-up would have transferred sound waves to the main speaker and you’d have been able to dance around the room. At some stage, my grandfather had replaced the old acoustic pick-up with an electric one and installed an electric amplifier and speaker in the space where the paper speaker had been. By the time we got it, this had all been removed; it was used as a TV stand and, because the TV sat on top, it was only years later that I discovered the turntable and grandad’s Heath Robinson conversion. We still have it today. It is in my hall by the front door with a china washing bowl on the top. Two bits of redundant technology put to ornamental use. If only grandad had kept the gramophone intact, we might have had a valuable antique.

The new (new to us) device was a radiogram - a radio and gramophone combined. It was electric and in perfect working order, but it only played 78rpm records and I guess someone had given it to my dad because they were upgrading to a new record player with a multi-speed turntable. It was a nice piece in a strong wooden case and came with a radio which had LW, MW and SW settings.

To play a record, you switched on the turntable and placed the pick-up arm onto the record by hand. When it finished playing, you had to jump up and switch it off, otherwise it made a dreadful din as it ran into the centre groove and just ‘looped’. The sound was fingernails scratched across a blackboard! The needles were like thick sewing needles with no eye and I guess they were made of brass. You bought them in a tin containing 50 or more and you had to change them about every 10 records because they became blunt and sound quality suffered.

I used my pocket money to buy records regularly, always 78s, and there was a seminal event when my sister got a free Cliff Richard record with her teen-mag (Boyfriend, or something). It was much smaller than the standard record and also made from flexible plastic. We were baffled and had to wait until dad came in to sort it out. I think he must have been just as baffled, but he put it on the record player, put the needle down and suddenly Cliff Richard sounded like Pinky and Perky or Alvin and the Chipmunks on speed.

The free record was a 45rpm disc and we’d got a 78rpm turntable! My sister got a Dansette record player later that year and the old radiogram was mine. I listened to Children’s Favourites on the Light Programme on Saturday morning and when Peter Roberts and I were playing space explorers, twisting the tuning dial on SW provided a realistic sound-effect for crossing deep space.

In Northwich, Dawson’s was where people bought their records and when I first went in, it sold a combination of instruments, lots of sheet music and a section for records, which gradually took more and more space from the sheet music. Almost every Saturday, I’d go to the library to change my books, then the pocket money was blown either on a record or a new Airfix model.

Later, 78s were less and less available and I got an HMV record player with multi-change. You could stack up to 10 records in the middle on a long spindle and set it to play. When it finished the record, the arm automatically lifted and retracted; a toggle allowed the next record to drop and it set off again. It was a mechanical marvel, but wasn’t foolproof. Sometimes two records dropped instead of one, sometimes the record stuck and didn’t drop properly, sometimes when there was a full stack, the arm couldn’t quite go high enough to play the last record.

Theoretically, it would work with LPs as well as singles, but that was even more unreliable. You could also lift the arm on top of the stack and push it to one side so it would keep playing the same record over and over. The HMV had a great tone and would play 75, 45 and 33rpm records. It also had a diamond stylus, which lasted for a year or more before quality went off.

My record buying extended into LPs as I got older and instead of Dawson’s, we moved to a new record shop, White and Swales, further along the high street. This had more choice and also listening booths where you could ask an assistant to play you a record while you stood in the sound booth. For a 14-year-old, this presented a world of wonder and embarrassment. Imagine me in my croaking, breaking voice asking the 18-year-old shop-girl, all back-combed hair and heavy eye make-up to play You Were Made For Me by Freddie and The Dreamers. Imagine the bored nonchelance, the scornful look (I should have asked for the latest Stones’ record), the self-conscious walk to the appointed booth, the record which seemed to last for 30 minutes (should I have a little dance, tap my feet, nod my head) then the walk back to the counter. The assistant would be talking to an older boy, smiling ... laughing and I had to say that I’d like the Freddie and The Dreamers record please (cue sniggers all round).



Sometimes it would be too much and you just had to run for it. Alan Bennett would have savoured the moment, knowing there was material for a scene in a book or a play in years to come. I had no such pay-back - just Freddie and a dream or two.

Sometimes there were bargains to be had in Woolworth’s (another defunct high street brand). They sold cheap records under their own brand - Embassy - that were either by less popular bands and artists or cover versions by session musicians. Some are probably collectors’ items now. I didn’t really appreciate a proper, dedicated record shop until I moved to Peterborough and there was Andy’s Records in Bridge Street.

The HMV record player lasted over 10 years until I was married and living in Warrington when Margaret and I bought a second-hand radiogram for about £20. This was my first stereophonic experience. I think it was made by Fidelity and it was a real piece of furniture - as big as a sideboard and with a radio, record player and room to store some records. It was a revelation. I was hearing parts of records that I’d never heard before; new chimes appeared on Tubular Bells and subtle chords on Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Variations that had been missing previously. It was as if I’d been deaf and now I could hear. The radiogram stayed with us until we moved to Thorney and I replaced it with separate pieces - a Sansui deck (no autoplay!), Hitachi 30watt amp and Hitachi tape deck and two massive, brilliant Celestion speakers. Later I added a CD player, ditched the tape deck, upgraded the amp and replaced those brilliant speakers with some tiny Kef speakers and a bass bin to stop Margaret’s carping. Small speakers is one of the compromises you have to make in marriage.

I replaced, replicated and added to my record collection with CD versions; then, when broadband arrived and iTunes was launched, I did it all over again with MP3 files. Now, I spend more on music than ever before and I never touch the stereo. We run everything through my old iPod or Margaret’s iPod Touch. I’ll probably move on to Spotify eventually.

I’m particularly sorry to see Jessop’s go because I’ve bought three cameras and a pair of binoculars from them and I’ve always had a good experience. They sold me a really nice Nikon compact which had a brilliant little lens. When that was stolen while travelling Europe in the care of Tom and Sam, they sold me an Olympus Miu and when film became redundant, that was replaced with a digital version. Staff were knowledgeable and prepared to spend time with you and let you be hands-on with the products.

We used Blockbusters for a short period of time. We were introduced to video recorders/players in around 1985 when we went to stay with Margaret’s brother Phil and his then wife Carmen in Weymouth. Phil had a Betamax format video player and later we bought a VHS.

We started using a video rental store in Whittlesey and later, when the children were older, we’d go to Lincoln Road in Peterborough. Saturday night treat was pizza and a video rental, we’d order the pizza and then go to Blockbusters to choose a video while the pizza was cooking. There was always a heated debate about what we’d have!

I find it hard to mourn the passing of HMV. They were focused on shops when they should have moved online and their high street retailer mindset also prevented them from going niche and specialist with expert staff to serve a smaller market. Why isn’t there a Spotify-type app called HMV?

Jessops haven’t done much wrong. They’ve been hit by the fact that almost every phone and all smart-phones now have very good cameras; also online retailing and comparison sites where you can read recommendations and then find the best price. It’s made a commodity out of a luxury, highly engineered product, but what could they have done to survive? Perhaps they could be a brand under the Amazon umbrella, perhaps you could talk to someone online and still benefit from genuine advice and recommendation rather than a slew of unqualified opinion some to be trusted, some not.

Blockbuster boomed on a shift in technology and they should have realised that was going to be short-lived. They have tried to move their business online, but they’ve been up against powerful multinationals such as Apple, where the maker of the “VCR” has also become a retailer of the video and the device is geared up to steer users towards its own products. It’s sad, but Blockbusters could never have a future as a high-street retailer. However, the pizza and video experience on a Saturday night wouldn’t be the same scrolling through the Netflix catalogue while waiting for dial-a-pizza to arrive.

Who’s next? Newsagents are under threat as newspaper sales shrink and magazines move towards tablet apps, Booksellers have already been hit by the growth of e-readers and are likely to be hit further.

I buy lots of things online and I’ve got a Kindle. I’d probably use Netflix if I had more time to watch TV and a half-decent broadband connection. I would miss the high street though, I enjoy browsing and actually physically buying something. There are already so many empty shops, even in busy cities. There will be lots more in years to come and definitely not enough charity and pound shops to fill the gap. Rather than building over the green belt, perhaps it’s time to knock down a few shops and build houses and flats in the high street?

Cars I have owned - No 5: Citroen GS Club

After the sturdy, workmanlike Viva, the Citroen GS was a technological marvel - a masterpiece of innovative engineering. It won the title of European Car of the Year in 1974; it was also the singular most unreliable, troublesome car I have ever owned.

I’m sad that these days Citroen is just another manufacturer of vanilla-coloured cars. Back then, they were really pushing the boundaries of technology and design and often they pushed them just a little too far.

The GS was front-wheel drive (most were still RWD) but that was just the start:

• The enine was an air-cooled flat four
• Brakes were inboard discs
• Brakes were power assisted, but no ABS
• Suspension was hydraulic and self-levelling
• It had class-leading aerodynamics

I bought the car with my heart, rather than my head. It had metallic green paintwork and green fabric seats. Most cars were faux-leather and fabric seats were a hallmark of luxury. It also had head restraints - one of the things I’d dreamed about - and it was a four-door.

The Citroen was M-reg and the first car I paid more than £1,000 for - I even treated myself to a radio.

Compared to other cars on the market, the GS’s aerodynamic design really set it apart. I thought I’d got a bargain and I even bought it with a scrape on the rear offside bodywork on the basis that the car was marked down and it would only cost me £100 to get it repaired.

That was my first mistake. The paintwork had faded and so, when the car was resprayed on the rear wing with the same factory paint, it was a different shade. I ended up getting the whole of the side of the car resprayed - a much bigger bill than I’d expected.

Starting the car was always a dark art. It was a flat-four, air-cooled with a single carburettor and a choke, so not unlike a VW Beetle. Unlike the Beetle, it revved willingly and wasn’t strangled by its own exhaust, but it didn’t like cold, it didn’t like damp and it didn’t seem to like me some mornings. I eventually developed a knack and an understanding of how to get it to start (full choke, three slow pumps of the accelerator and then foot off the throttle when you crank the engine), but I was never confident. Even with my honed technique, sometimes it would give a Gallic shrug and there would be nothing you could do except wait a few minutes and try again.

When I’d had the car a few weeks, I decided I’d take the spark plugs out to give then a clean and check the gaps. This was an incredibly difficult job. On the Viva, the engine stood high and proud with a foot and a half of space each side. Removing spark plugs couldn’t have been easier! On the Citroen, the engine sat low and flat and because it was air-cooled, it had a large fan at the front (driven off the crankshaft) to pull in lots of air, which was directed around the engine via a large metal cowl. Opening the bonnet of the GS revealed a hidden, alien world for anyone used to standard motor car engineering.

I worked out where the spark plugs were and managed to get the first one out. It looked fine, biscuit brown and the correct gap. I decided the others would be OK too and abandoned my DIY, but when I put the spark plug back in, it wouldn’t tighten, it just kept turning. I put the cap back on and the engine started but as soon as the cylinder got some compression applied, the plug popped out. I lodged it back in and the engine ran quite well on three cylinders (well enough to get me to the garage on Monday).

I’d overtightened the plug and stripped the thread. The Citroen had an aluminium cylinder head (most cars were iron) and aluminium being softer, it was relatively easy to do. I’d feared a big bill, but the garage had done a few of these before and they just put in a helicoil insert (basically a plug with a new spark plug hole. I kept clear of the spark plugs after that.

The GS has a 1050cc engine, but being a flat-four configuration, it had good torque characteristics and it revved much more freely than the Vauxhall. These days (and even then) it would be considered seriously under-powered, but I felt it was an improvement on the Viva and, remember, these were the days when there were plenty of VW Beetles, Fiat Cinquecentoes (which actually were 500cc back then), Mini 850s and also plenty of Citroen Ami, Dyane and 2CVs with engines ranging from 600cc to 800cc.

The really odd thing was the suspension. The hydraulic pressure was provided by a pump so that when the engine wasn’t running the car settled down on its stops and pumped itself up again once the engine started. You had to be careful where you parked it because if you put the front over a kerb, when it settled down it would ground itself and damage the bodywork. The suspension had three settings - standard (for normal use), high (for greater ground clearance if you were driving across a field, which I never did, but which the French do all the time apparently) and a setting which jacked it right up, used only when you were changing wheels.

I liked the feeling when the engine started and the car came into life. It would haul itself up at the front at first and then the back of the car would rise before it made a few final adjustments. It only took 10 seconds or so, but it felt like an animal stretching itself after a snooze. The suspension never gave me any trouble, it was a superb ride and would also mitigate against dive when braking.

The pump that provided the suspension pressure also provided power for the brakes. These were the best brakes I’d ever experienced and at first it was hard not to stand the car on its nose by braking too hard. There was hardly any travel in the pedal and it operated more like a switch than anything else.

The discs were inboard rather than being within the wheel, the idea being to have bigger discs while also keeping the unsprung weight down to help handling. Downside was that because the discs were inside the car body, they didn’t get as much air flowing around them to keep them cool. Brake overheating and fade was a reported problem, but I never experienced any difficulty, except with the handbrake. This was typically French. It was applied by pulling out a lever from under the dashboard and it must have clamped a couple of calipers against the disc. It would never hold on anything but the lightest slope despite being adjusted again and again by the garage.

I’d gone from rod-and-cable brakes (Ford Popular) where you have to brace yourself in the seat and push as hard as you could to get the car to stop to the power discs of the Citroen where the lightest touch was all you needed in eight years of motoring. One grumble about the GS was the steering. Considering everything else was power assisted/operated, the steering was not. It was excessively heavy at parking speed and the steering wheel was fashionably small - no dustbin lid like the FWD Mini.

Our longest trip in the car was to Falmouth in Cornwall to visit our friends Andy Butcher and his girlfriend (later wife) Mandy. After a week in Cornwall, we headed up to Helpston, near Peterborough, where my sister Margaret and husband Mick were living. In those days the M5 was only two lanes and would back up in numerous places. Also the A30 through Okehampton, Launceston and Bodmin was single carriageway, so there were massive hold-ups on summer weekends. We drove down overnight and arrived about 7am on a bright summer morning and I had ice-cream for breakfast. We were so early we had to hang around for a while until our friends were awake.

It was a good holiday and we drove all around Cornwall in the car, including Land’s End, The Lizard, Mousehole and Helston.

The journey to my sister’s the following Saturday was another long one. I think we went A303 and A34, then across to Northampton on the A43. I was pushing the car hard to try to get there in a decent time and I noticed a grinding, whine coming from the front wheel. I’d had the wheel bearing replaced just before going on holiday and thought they’d put a duff bearing in. When I checked it out at Helpston, the wheel was physically loose; I jacked it up and took the wheel off and the main nut that holds on the wheel assembly was within a turn of coming off (and the wheel with it). The nut was castellated, so it had bumps around it. Once it was tightened, a locking pin was inserted through a hole in the spindle and it rested within the bumps so the nut couldn’t unscrew. The garage had failed to insert the locking pin when they changed the wheel bearing!

I called the RAC and they came to collect it. The car was driven onto a low loader and we got caught out with the suspension, the car settling onto the winch by the bulkhead when the engine was switched off. I had to jump in quickly and start the engine before too much damage was done to the front valance. The car was soon fixed, it just needed a new locking pin.

We liked Peterborough, Stamford and the villages and that holiday was probably what persuaded us to move to Peterborough the following spring, so the Citroen had another couple of trips when I went for an interview to the Peterborough Standard and then when we moved to Bretton.

In spite of its reliability issues, I liked the GS. It was a supremely comfortable car, but it was also suffering from the start of corrosion, with a line of bubbles appearing in the paintwork around the rear wing where the internal mudguard was attached to the bodywork.

I sold it for about £800 when I got my next car (my first company car) an S-reg Morris Marina 1.3GL.

Thanks to Joost Bakker for the image.


Also see:

Ford Popular - click

Bedford HA Van - click

Morris Mini - click

Vauxhall Viva HC - click