No. 37 - What Every Boy Wants (Part Two)

After I’d left my father’s primary school our relationship entered a new phase. We were no longer living in each other’s pockets nearly every minute of nearly every day. Perhaps that is why in the summer of 1970, he decided that it would be a good idea to leave Mum behind and go on a road trip, just the two of us.

Mum and Dad in London in 1968

I wrote before about my struggles with car sickness, but, rather embarrassingly, this Welsh boy has never been car sick in England. The roads were straighter and better, the view less obscured by interminable hedgerows, and everything was new and interesting. I wasn't free of car sickness until I learnt to drive at seventeen, but if Dad avoided the stomach-churning short-cuts he prided himself on finding, a few road trips were just possible as I grew older. The most notable was this journey from Pwllheli to Ipswich to see my brother Jos when I was twelve.

Ahead of the trip, Dad wrote to the AA for a detailed route and the information that could be found in seconds today, dropped through the letterbox about two weeks later. Furnished with what he called ‘the gen’ he pored over it correcting it here and there. When we set off, going through North Wales presented us no problems and as he stuck to the main roads for once, I was able to fend off the nausea. As soon as we crossed the border into England I felt fine. Locating the M6 and M1 was easy enough - they are rather difficult things not to find. Once the motorway was behind us we would face the unknown wilderness of East Anglia.

We both had new summer clothes for the holiday. I was wearing my first ever pair of flared jeans, which had cost 99p from Bon Marche. I sported a purple nylon shirt, which it was impossible to keep tucked in. In trying, I probably generated more sparks than the panto-graph on an electric train. Dad had two new pairs of trousers in his usual baggy style, a shapeless 1930’s chic, but I found them marginally less embarrassing to be seen beside than his everyday wear.

Newport Pagnell plunder and a road map of flat East Anglia

The busy motorway excited me, with thousands of cars and all those people cocooned in them, each with their own stories. I wondered about them all. Then, as now, I did a lot of wondering. Before venturing into the unknown, we stopped at Newport Pagnell Service Station to stretch our legs and have a bite to eat. A place that must have been drearily mundane to most, was to me a magical wonderland, which I thought far superior to my home town. This was mostly down them carrying a vast selection of American superhero comics - Green Lantern, Flash, Batman - I favoured DC. In Pwllheli you could buy them in the Joke Shop or the West End Stores, but you couldn’t even get these in a consistent, chronological sequence. All my holiday money would have been spent in one fell swoop had Dad not put his foot down. Dad’s foot was usually down and on that occasion it was a good job.

The motorway driving had tired him out and although we had expected to complete the journey in a single day, he decided that we should stay in a bed and breakfast in Bedford, the next big town. I had never stayed in any kind of guest house or hotel before. It was different, so it was exciting. Dad congratulated himself on not warning my brother that we were coming, because he’d only have worried when we didn’t show up. It would be over half a century before I’d visit Bedford again, prompted by a desire to see the old airship sheds at Cardington. I think that Dad would have approved of that trip. In the 1930’s he was in his twenties and I expect he would have been very much into pioneering aviation and the obsession with speed records. I always got the impression that he was interested in practically everything, which was why he was such a good teacher, and I think he'd have been as thrilled as I was by the giant airship sheds.

The final stretch of the journey to Ipswich may have excited me, but for Dad it was stressful. He was never a calm man, particularly behind the wheel of a car. He drove as though everyone was out to get him, and sometimes it almost seemed as though they were. Compared to today, the road system was archaic and bypasses were uncommon. Without local knowledge there seemed no other option but to crawl through the Cambridge traffic. No doubt Dad wanted to share all he knew about the university city, but he had to concentrate on one-way streets, seemingly endless road works and other potential hazards.

Me in about 1970

After successfully negotiating Cambridge, he relaxed a bit and we discussed what the pronunciation of St Neot’s was likely to be. Was it ‘newts’, ‘notes’, ‘noots’ or was it more phonetic? Newmarket had interesting signposts relating to its racecourse and stables, but it was straightforward enough and we made it safely into Suffolk. I loved the scenery, but it was all too flat for Dad's liking - and it certainly was flat, compared with Wales. We eased through Bury St Edmunds which, we both agreed, was ‘terrifically well signposted’. I was always relieved to find common ground with Dad, even if it was as mundane as that. He was sitting easier in the driving seat, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth now that he was more relaxed.

Thirteen miles short of our destination the calamity struck. Unlike Bury, Stowmarket was not ‘terrifically well signposted’ and in traffic, we made a wrong turn and got lost. Dad reacted as though we’d just slid down the biggest snake on a Snakes & Ladders board - the one that takes you almost back to the start. Although only a small town, it was thick with traffic and although he thought he could see which way we needed to go, his attempts to get there were repeatedly thwarted, and he got into a flap. As a light turned green, we finally looked as though we were escaping the mess, but that was the moment the end of Dad’s cigarette dropped off and set fire to his new trousers. His previous panics were nothing compared to this, because he no choice other than to continue driving with his trousers smouldering.

“In the name of God do something!” he shouted.

“Like WHAT?” I shouted back. What twelve-year-old wants anything at all to do with his father’s trousers, whether they’re on fire or not?

He pulled over as soon as he was able and patted frantically at his smoking lap. Despite the drama, there was only a small burn hole to be seen, but he feared having to explain the damage to his new clothing to Mum.

We found my brother’s house in Ipswich but unfortunately, they were not at home and the evidence suggested that they hadn’t just popped out. Dad’s ‘surprise visit’ seemed less of a masterstroke than it had the previous evening. Today it seems unfathomable that someone would drive nearly 300 miles without announcing their intention to do so. Still, it was meant to be a surprise, and it certainly was. Dad guessed correctly that Jos had gone to visit my eldest brother Jeff, in Doncaster. A telephone call was made and Jos chose to dash back down the A1, which Dad still insisted on calling the 'Great North Road', and across to Ipswich, a journey of some 174 miles. Dad’s surprise had a heavy carbon footprint, although we didn’t think about such things as much in 1970.

With a few hours to kill, Dad drove us to a little place called Shotley Gate, where the rivers Stour and Orwell flowed into the sea. In this unfamiliar place, with the worst of his ordeal behind him, he was good company and it was one of the rare times I was happy with it being just the two of us. We could see the ports of Harwich and Felixtowe across the water and the East Goodwin Light Ship was at anchor in the estuary. A natural teacher, he was able to explain to me what we were seeing and answer most of my questions.

In most respects, I don’t believe I’m much like my father, apart from inheriting his lack of patience with inanimate objects. If a drawer gets stuck, it is the drawer’s fault, and it must be punished. Also, like him I like to know something about everything, but not too much about anything. As an information junkie, Dad would have been enthusiastic about, and greatly excited by the internet, but I’m glad it wasn’t around on that day in Shotley Gate. I had to get my information from him rather than by just being able to Google it. I was seldom comfortable alone with him, so times like these are all the more precious.

Sadly, he had only four more years to live, so we would never get to have a pint together and I would never get to know him as an adult. Not just as a parent, but as a person.

No. 36 - What Every Boy Wants (Part One)