CAR ROUTE 1971

It's 1971, I am 23. I decided the route to a car was to buy a scooter which I could drive on a provisional motorbike licence, take the test to get a full motorbike licence, which enabled me to drive a 3-wheeler car, and so learn to drive, and then get a full car licence. After spending two years in a Manchester University Halls of Residence I had to find accommodation of my own. I ended up in a flat in a Victorian house a mile or so from the Halls in Osborne Road. I didn't buy a scooter, but just round the corner was a motorbike shop with second hand mopeds. At this time the market was being flooded with the innovative Honda 50 'Mopeds', though actually they didn't have pedals – 50cc, two stroke, centrifugal clutch, tubular steel frame and GRP fairings, maximum speed probably 40mph, driveable on a provisional motorbike licence. - aimed very successfully at those who wouldn't be seen dead on a motorbike.

So I bought one. Of course I didn't have a licence, so I wheeled it round to the house, which had a basement accessed by a separate door and parked it on its stand inside. The licence took a fortnight to arrive, and in the meantime I would sit on the moped excitedly revving the engine to get the feel of it – it's amazing I didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning. With the licence and some 'L' plates I was finally FREE! I took a few turns round local roads, it was much like riding a bicycle, and then I used it to get into the University (about three miles). It was so light that you could take it on trains, in the guard's van (remember those). I took it back home in the holidays and parked it by the side of the caravan, “Woger's mo-bike” as the toddler next door christened it.

I got a summer job in Portsmouth City Council's Architecture Department for six weeks, taking the moped – there is a photo of me on it outside the house with 'L' plates. The strange thing is I have no memory of taking a test, or of what happened to it – but I certainly have a full motorbike licence. I don't think I had it in my 'Year Out' in London, or Fiona would not have had to buy a Morris Minor, nor in my 5th year at Manchester when I definitely got the bus.

When I moved to London and a permanent job in 1974 I was seduced by the slick advertising (a young architect getting into one) and bought a second hand Bond Bug made by Reliant (where from?) - a bright orange wedge of a 3-wheeler with a GRP body, top opening canopy, and room for two. I think it had a Ford Prefect engine, which took it to 70mph. As I had a motorbike licence I could drive it immediately. I drove it slowly round and round the square of quiet  roads near my flat until I had gained confidence – the residents must have been very puzzled, and then ventured further afield practising with all the other learners in some quiet roads in Fulham, when I almost came to grief. Going round my first big roundabout, the 'Robin Hood' on the A3, I misjudged it and the nose swung under the tail-gate of a lorry. I escaped death by inches.

When I was totally confident I visited Laura at her Youth Hostel, and gave her a lift home. I also took mother on our Cornwall holiday to St Just in Roseland. And there the Bug was ruined – we were sightseeing and a sports car was parked uphill from my Bug. Whose handbrake failed and it ran downhill into the Bug, caving in the GRP front. It was still driveable, but was ruined. I sold it to a Reliant dealer in Ealing. They are worth a fortune now.

Finally I took a test in Greenford (very flat!) and got a full car licence in about 1985 and bought a real car, a second hand Java green Mini Clubman (the Estate version of the Mini) from a restorer in Hammersmith, which was no different to drive than the Bug.

Plan completed! I had become a Real Person.

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