No. 34 - "It Won't Be Long Now"

Things that helped me remember.

A Mass of Contradictions

As a child, I adored motor cars and everything associated with them - garages, road signs, tax disks. I had quite an impressive selection of Dinky and Corgi diecast toy cars. I may have had James Bond’s golden Aston Martin, complete with bullet-proof shield and ejector seat, but most of the models were replicas of the saloons, estates and convertibles one saw on the roads at the time. If anyone in our family bought a new car, I would have to have a model of it.

To my eyes, the period between the late 1940’s and the mid 1960’s was a golden age for car design, where each model had an individuality unmatched before or since. Although on a smaller scale and a little more subdued, British cars were clearly influenced by the huge, gorgeous, exotically-named automobiles that bounced around the highways of the United States - built by Buick, Studebaker, Oldsmobile, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Dodge, Cadillac.

Uncle Owen had one of these and the failure to get a Dinky replica was a great disappointment. (Internet Archive)

However glamorous those seemed, uniquely British car names were just as evocative to me - Sunbeam Rapier, Singer Gazelle, Hillman Minx, Ford Zodiac, Humber Hawk, Morris Oxford, Austin Cambridge, Triumph Herald, Standard Vanguard. They came in a wide selection of colours with plenty of chrome detail. Nowadays, when I encounter surviving models from that era that still grace the roads, even the ones I considered boring at the time, look classy - even the Austin A35.

I enjoy looking at photos and film footage of cars from the period, to the point that it’s almost as though I’m revelling in some kind of car porn. The chrome radiators and trim, the leather seats, the walnut dashboards - to me, all of it makes today’s metallic silver or grey boxes, look uniformly cheap and deadly dull. I can even sympathise with the advertisers who have to come up with all kinds of nonsense to sell the things - because they can hardly say ‘Buy our cars - they may look just like all the others, but they’re better - honest.’

But at this point my rose tinted glasses steam up. Although I used to love motor cars as a child, I also suffered from terrible car sickness, and I know that if I was presented one of those glorious models from the past, actually travelling in it would make me as sick as a poisoned dog. I may find today’s cars exceptionally dull, but as well as being faster, cleaner and safer, they are far less likely to make me throw up.

We'll Keep a Bucket in the Hillside

My father had a Ford Anglia. It was a105E, a neat little car, introduced in 1959 and produced until 1968 and was the model seen in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. My father’s was green and I hated the sight of it. Often I was sent to fetch something that Dad had left inside it, and whenever it happened I would hold my breath, open the door, dive in, snatch the item and get out quickly. A few yards away from its stink, I’d stand gasping and spluttering as though I’d had to plunge under water for it. My brother recalls doing exactly the same in the earlier, even smellier 1940’s model I can vaguely remember.

I feel quite queasy even looking at it. (Internet Archive)

The 105E was a two door saloon and the rear side windows could not be wound down, but could be pushed open, just a crack. Every adult in the family smoked at the time and they would never have dreamt of missing out on that pleasure during one of our long, long journeys from North to South Wales. But we couldn't go for any distance with the windows open - there were expensive perms to be considered, along with the peculiarly adult fear of 'a nasty draught'. Adding to my discomfort, Dad left the plastic covers on the seats to protect the upholstery from my shoes, not to mention my vomit, and it was quite painful to peel my bare legs off them, particularly in hot weather. En route I would throw up over and over again, until there was nothing more to come out.

Dad used to say, “If you’re feeling sick just say so, and we’ll stop.” Had I taken this advice, I think we might still be on that journey. The truth was that I felt sick from the moment I set eyes on the damned car until half an hour or so after leaving both it, and the contents of my stomach, behind me.

Anybody who has ever suffered from car sickness will know how miserable a long road journey can be. Indeed, a short one is bad enough. At least once a year, I was forced to climb into the back of Dad’s Anglia and endure hours of nausea as we drove across the hills and valleys of Wales from Pwllheli in the North to Ferndale in the South. It was a beautiful, scenic run for anyone not afflicted, but it was a wretched ordeal for me. The dismal route is etched onto my memory like costly battles embroidered on a regimental banner - Porthmadog - Llanelltyd - Dolgellau - Machynlleth - Caersws - Newtown - Llanidloes - Rhayader - Builth Wells - Brecon - Aberdare. In fact, even today the very mention of Aberdare cheers me up a little, because I associate it with nearing the end of an ordeal.

I was often a victim of the 'special dose'. (Daily Express 22/06/1962 via British Newspaper Archive.)

Always convinced that there must be a trick to it, Dad would interrogate me about my experience, trying to find a cure for what was almost as unpleasant for everyone else in the vehicle as it was for me. Poor Auntie Eva once had to travel most of the way in just her petticoat having been quite spectacularly hurled over. They bought me some tiny white pills called Kwells which were bitter to the taste and hard to swallow. They’d try and smuggle one into me by crushing it and dropping it into some orange squash. It did not dissolve and I could see it, but my protests were in vain. They’d tell me I was imagining it. In the end they resorted to feeding it to me in a spoonful of strawberry jam. The pills didn’t work - they merely added another layer of misery to my day. Dad tried liberally spraying the interior of the car with air freshener, but the only effect was that I came to hate the smell of most air fresheners, and I still do. They tried to distract me by playing games like I-Spy or counting the red cars we passed. They encouraged me to sleep, which was an awful idea because waking up on the verge of vomiting was horrible. Another bad idea was giving me things to read. I can remember being sick over a copy of The Topper, which they dried out and gave back to me afterwards because I hadn’t finished it and my parents 'weren't made of money.'

As I grew older I developed strategies of my own, none of which turned out to be any more effective than theirs. I’d hold an apple to my face so that I could only smell the freshness of the fruit, which worked for all of five minutes. I would bite my lip until it bled, thinking that the pain would take my mind off the nausea. It didn’t. I was convinced that every ounce of my concentration was needed to prevent me from being sick, so inquiries about how I was feeling or advice on potential remedies were unwelcome, in fact they made everything worse. I knew they only meant to help, but they didn’t, and I would snap at them until they shut up. They told me that sitting on newspaper was said to cure car sickness, presumably believing me either too young or too stupid to realise that they were accepting the inevitable and preparing for the clean-up. Mum was overwhelmingly sympathetic, while Dad did his best to supress his impatience, both with me for spoiling the journey and his own failure to find some trick that would resolve the issue.

After hours of this, when there was nothing left to be thrown up, I’d listen despondently to the engine labouring as the car struggled over the mountain from Aberdare, and often the rhythmic whining of the windscreen wipers as they squeaked back and forth - back and forth. “It won’t be long now, love” Mum would say with a forced cheeriness, but I knew that it would be long, and that even if it wasn’t, it would certainly seem long. Horrible as travelling in a car smelling of vomit was for them, I know I was their main concern. Even Dad could see what an ordeal it was for me, particularly with the shadow of the return journey looming. Even where there is no threat to life, for a parent to see their child suffer but to be unable to do anything effective about it must be awful.

Salvation

Having the Rhondda Fach at the end of it all made the suffering worthwhile. Auntie Eva’s grand and welcoming house in Llyn Crescent and Ferndale itself, with its steeply sloping streets, a park with a lake and floating island, doorstep deliveries of Corona pop as though it were milk, friendly people with lovely, warm accents. The stark pithead winding gear and the dark, pointed coal tips gave it a drama that my home town of Pwllheli couldn’t match. It seemed important and exciting compared to the seaside resort that was my small world.

Then there was Auntie Eva herself, the elegant woman who was happy to sit by the fire with me making toast on a brass toasting fork. There was a crowd of other aunts, uncles and neighbours who would make a big fuss of me and slip coins into my chubby little hand as I worked the room, trading on my well-spoken cuteness like a little blond hooker. Although the journeys seemed interminable, I recovered quickly thanks to my wild excitement and a rush of incoming love and currency.

The 'little blond hooker' reaches for another coin.

Almost all my early travelling was confined to Wales. Curiously, I was never car sick in England. Some of the qualities that make the Welsh countryside so attractive, the winding, hilly roads and verdant hedgerows, are not great for motion sickness. In England I could see farther and everything was new and interesting. The roads were bigger and better, especially the M6 and the M1. However much may father hated driving on them, on a motorway I could forget all about being sick and take an interest in all the vehicles around me.

I didn’t fully grow out of the car sickness though, not until I learned to drive at seventeen.

Film

A promotional film from 1959 celebrating the introduction of the Ford Anglia 105E, was directed by Joseph Losey (The Servant, Blind Date etc). I think the experience depicted would have been very different had I been a passenger in the back seat. WARNING! You may need to mute it. The accompanying score is the very worst of 1950's jazz.