Austin A40

“My uncle had one. We used to sit in it and pretend we were driving. Anywhere really. To the moon, down to the beach and for some reason, to the shops,” I said.

“So you bought it from your uncle? He kept it in remarkable nick.”

“No, for starters, my uncle died ten years ago, and even if he was alive, he’d be old, really old. They probably would let him drive,” I said, and I was beginning to get annoyed.

“So, what’s the point?” said my soon to be ex-friend Derrick.

“The point, Derrick, is that I’ve achieved a lifelong dream. I now own a car just like the one my uncle owned.”

“Didn’t your uncle get done for offering sweets to not quite legal young women?”

“No, that was another uncle. I’ve got a whole bunch of uncles. One was an Antarctic explorer. Another one had an ice-cream shop empire, which he duly lost when the casino opened. Another one was quiet and boring and told excellent stories. I liked that one.”

“And one was a kiddie-fiddler?”

“Not technically. He never managed any sort of fiddling, but he got six months for trying. Can we get back to my car?”

“Sure.”

“It’s true that it’s sometimes hard to start and it doesn’t like Australia’s hot weather, but apart from that …”

“It has wipers that don’t really work?”

“I’m working on that, but it does have a one-piece windscreen. It was a big deal back then.”

“When was ‘back then’?”

“1950.”

“Shit! That’s a long time ago.”

“Yeah, right? And here it is seventy-one years later. Chicks love old cars.”

“Do they love your old car?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” I said, and my enthusiasm was beginning to sag.

The ‘do chicks love your old car?’, was kind of the point, and I was reluctant to admit that it wasn’t working. I’d spent all the money I’d saved. Took me three years to get that money together and my sex life was just as crap as it was before I’d bought the car.

Derrick went back to wherever it is that Derrick comes from, and I was left with my thoughts.

I cast my mind back to when I was a kid and the conversations I’d had with my uncle.

It meant nothing to me then, but now I come to think about it, I do remember my uncle saying that he wasn’t getting much action at home since he’d bought that car.

He was indeed pissed at the time (I didn’t think much of that then either — most of my relatives smelled of alcohol – I thought it was probably deodorant).

“Sex is impossible once you get married boy, don’t do it!” he said, and I think he passed out.

To be honest, I didn’t know what sex was back then, and I’m beginning to forget what it is in the here and now.

Gotta get rid of that car.