How Many More Miles to Go?

A bit of the news caught my ears today. Something about a breeding pair of Landrovers doing well in China.

Maybe I heard wrong?

My father once brought a Landrover home from work in the early 1960's. I was very little, but remember the basic clankiness of chains rattling around, lots of catches and cold metal stuff. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to me up to that point in my short life - sitting in the back of a Landrover. (As I think I mentioned earlier, life was a tad dull in those days). My parents owned a Morris Minor at that time. It was a ferocious beast. It had blue eyes (there was some tinting on the headlamps). I remember having the onerous duty of putting out an empty milk bottle one morning, turning to look up the drive towards the open garage, and being so scared of the evil creature ready to pounce on me, that I dropped the bottle, which smashed dramatically. Maybe I did it deliberately to halt the progress of the creature, subliminally recognising that the tyres would deflate over broken glass.

In a later decade, my brother enjoyed driving a Morris Minor estate. It was a half timbered affair, sort of mock tudor. Frightfully sophisticated, with all that wood, who needs chrome? And a car that you can clean with a can of Pledge and a duster. How quaint is that?

We used to spend a lot of time in cars, going on family holidays to Devon, to see Grandad. In those days it was a two day journey. We three siblings would cram in the back of whatever car we had then (I mostly remember the Corsair). Me being the smallest had to sit in the middle with my feet resting on the bumpy bit in the middle. We were fed boiled sweets from the 'sweetie mine' (or glove compartment to normal people), which, when my mother executed an emergency stop (which seemed to happen with alarming regularity) would lodge in my throat. I felt my life ebb away and as I fought for breath, arms flailing, gagging and clutching my throat, my father would utter soothing things like, 'You'll be fine in ten minutes'. This always happened, it was horrible, but he fed us boiled sweets on every journey I can remember for years. I didn't have to eat them I suppose, but you are a bored child on a long journey. A pear drop is the highlight of the day.

Mother's emergency stops were a result of my father screaming 'leap, leap, leap' at road junctions, so she would accelerate hard, lose her nerve and stamp on the brake and then he would remonstrate with her to the next junction. We lurched like this for the several hundred miles (or so it seemed) to Grandad. He never seemed that bothered to see us, and would shuffle in his carpet slippers and oddly out-of-place labcoat to his pantry. He would make gutteral noises in the back of his throat, and shuffle out again, with a catering size tin of honey clutched to his chest. I think this is why I have always enjoyed Winne the Pooh so much.

I wonder how many stories will be unfolding in the Landrovers in China? They will probably cover far longer journeys, with far more exotic landscapes. Wherever they go, a good proportion of them will have children sitting in the back asking, 'How many more miles to go?'.