Category Archives: Life

My motoring life

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This post lists the cars I’ve owned over the last fifty-four years. Sadly, I don’t have pictures of most of them. On turning seventeen I got my provisional licence and signed up with the instructor who had taught my mother to drive. In May 1971, at my second attempt, I passed the test and getting a car became my all-consuming ambition. I was working for the AA between school and university and reckoned I could save £100 for the car + £50 for insurance. My father didn’t drive, couldn’t see why I needed a car and so was not willing to help me, a pity really as an extra £100-£200 would have made a huge difference to what I could buy.

Now for the cars

1. 1962 Mini

After endless scanning of ads in the local paper and Exchange and Mart and numerous wasted visits to view rust boxes I settled on a nine-year old Mini that showed its age. I should have waited until I’d saved a bit more but the impatience of youth knew no bounds. The car may have cost £100 but during the two years I owned it I spent around £400 on replacing parts, most expensively the engine and gearbox, but also was a sucker for accessories that would allegedly make the car go better, faster or be safer. Most Saturdays were spent fixing something, whether necessary or not.  Its fate was sealed when a massive Scania truck ploughed into it when stopped at traffic lights.
Engine: 848cc, 34 BHP, Overall length 3.0m

2. 1970 Mini van

The cars that followed were much better, largely because by then I had more money at my disposal: the Mini was replaced by 1970 Mini van bought from my upstairs neighbour. It had the optional 998cc engine. I fitted, necessitating the payment of Purchase Tax. This vehicle served me well for several years.
Engine: 998cc, 38 BHP, Overall length 3.3m

3. DAF 66 Estate

In 1976 I got promoted to District Building Control Officer, one benefit of this being that I now qualified for a low-interest car loan, repaid by deductions from my salary. DAFs of this era were famous for their own ‘rubber band’ automatic transmission, since reinvented as CVT transmission used in millions of cars across the world. It made for a very good car when driving from site to site. Helpfully, the nearest main dealer to me, Woodlawn Motors was easy to get to.
Engine: 1289cc, 57 BHP, Overall length 3.8m

4. 1979 Chrysler Sunbeam 1.3 – my first new car

I can’t remember why I decided to change cars, but the Chrysler Sunbeam caught my attention. I was particularly attracted by the frameless rear window.After a while I decided that I needed something with larger luggage capacity. Going over the jaded paintwork with T-Cut left patches of primer. The solution was what is known as a ‘blow over’. The trade-in dealer was not impressed!

Engine: 1295cc, 59 BHP, Overall length 3.8m


5. 1981 Austin Maxi 1750L

About this time  British Leyland were selling off stocks of the just-discontinued Austin Maxi. A new one could be mine for £4,100 and soon was. To my boss’s chagrin, mine, unlike his, was a good reliable vehicle. Apart from the load-carrying capacity, the other attractions were the 1748cc engine which brought in a higher work mileage allowance, and its overall length of 4.04m, which meant just it fitted in the off-street parking space at my home. It stayed on the DVLA register until 2000, a life of 19  years.

Engine: 1748cc, 72 BHP, Overall length 4.1m


6.1985 Austin Maestro HLE

Maestro cutaway (from brochure)

Maestro cutaway (from brochure)


Lot of people rate the Maestro as British Leyland’s worst car. I beg to differ: I like the big doors, generous glass area and wheel-at-each-corner styling. A local dealer had this one on the forecourt and with the benefit of finance (which I later regretted) it was mine. It was an HLE model (premium trim, economy tune) and was a beautifully relaxing car to drive.

AROnline Maestro development story.Engine: 1275cc, 64 BHP, Overall length 4.05m

7. 1990 Skoda Favorit

8. 1995 Skoda Felicia

In the early-1990s my business was failing and I was deep in debt. Then the tide turned. With more than a little difficulty I cleared the car loan on the Maestro and sold it, giving me a temporary cash buffer. My DAF dealer (above) now sold Skodas  and I was able to buy a Favorit 136L on HP with a very low deposit, the remaining cash tiding me over – this was the time of the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia so perhaps Skoda were desperate to move metal.  When I collected it, I looked at the dashboard and remarked to the dealer, “it’s got a rev counter; this model doesn’t”. In reply he said “it’s so chaotic in the factory that they’re fitting whatever they can find: count yourself lucky”.  

Following Volkswagen’s takeover of Skoda, The Felicia was a reskinned Favorit with other VW engineering improvements – for example mine retained the Skoda 1289cc engine, but with fuel injection rather than a carburettor.

Engines: 1289cc, 63/68 BHP, Overall length 3.85m

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9. 1998 Suzuki Wagon

Suzuki Wagon series 1 (from brochure)

Suzuki Wagon series 1 (from brochure)

As someone who places a premium on functionality, the Suzuki Wagon looked just the vehicle for me. Others were less keen. Jeremy Clarkson (IIRC) said of it “the only person who would buy one of these is an escapee from a lunatic asylum”. And I was hoping to keep my secret safe! Uniquely both Wagons were built in Hungary.

10. 2001 Suzuki Wagon

Suzuki Wagon series 2 (from brochure)

Suzuki Wagon series 2 (from brochure)


The  second incarnation of the Wagon was an aesthetically less challenging restyle. Mine is still on the DVLA register, MOT expiring January 2006. Apart from my DAF it was my first automatic.

Engines: 996/1298cc, 64/75 BHP, Overall length 3.4/3.5m


11. 2003 Honda Jazz

12. 2006 Honda Jazz

My second Honda Jazz

My second Honda Jazz

When the Honda Jazz appeared I knew it was the car for me, mainly because of its ‘magic seat’ which when folded gave a massive luggage capacity. I bought one and wasn’t disappointed.

Three  years on I got a mailout from Chiswick Honda saying that they were short of cars like mine and would be able to offer me a very good trade-in price against a new Jazz. My first instinct was to ignore it, but on checking their website this looked to be true. At Chiswick Honda I tabled a printout of an ad showing what they could sell mine for, and my cheque book (remember them?) and said that if they could agree to £4,000 cost-to-change we had a deal. They did, we did.
Engines: 1339cc, 82 BHP, Overall length 3.3m

Why these cars?

When I moved into my own home in 1981 the 4m max parking space (ex front garden) was a key factor in choosing a car.

Whilst working as  a council employee  (1974-1984), maximising the difference between the mileage money one could claim and running costs was a key factor: thus a Maxi 1750 could be a better option than something smaller.

Once I became self-employed in the UK (1984-2008) it made most sense to run my cars as company cars and change them every three years or so. Choosing cars like my two Suzuki Wagons and two Honda Jazzes kept the perk tax to a minimum. IIRC the tax due was originally based on engine size, then on CO2 emissions. The Jazz was particularly good in this respect.

The ones I didn’t buy

You’ll have noted the absence of exotica, fast cars and prestige cars. No Fords or Vauxhalls either.

For my first car, I was mainly looking at Minis. I would have done better with an Austin A40 or Morris 1000, but the techno-snob in me didn’t want a car with 1950s technology. I also looked at several Wolseley Hornets and Riley Elfs (Minis with a boot) but the ones in my price range were really ready for the breakers.

Later I was attracted by the idea of a Saab 96 or Nissan Prairie  but both were too long for my parking space. With hindsight I wish I’d bought a Triumph 1300 at some point.

And in Australia …

Here in Australia I’ve owned a Prius C, Nissan X-Trail and  Toyota RAV4 hybrid.

In my teenage days most of my contemporaries and me impatiently waited for our seventeenth birthdays, the point at which we could apply for provisional driving licences and start the journey that would end with passing the driving test.  This is now less the case: In UK a government report stated that  driving licensing among young people peaked in 1992/4, with 48% of 17-20 year-olds holding a driving licence. By 2014 only  29% of 17-20 year olds held a licence.

 

 

A trip to Panda Mart

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During my life retail has seen numerous changes: the growth of supermarkets and retail chains, big box discount stores, IKEA, online shopping and more. New to Australia is South Africa-based Panda Mart. They opened their first Australian warehouse outlet in Cranbourne, an outer suburb, 43km (27mi) SE of the Melbourne CBD on February 27th, the occasion being marked by huge crowds necessitating additional security and police attendance.

The store, housed in what was a Masters DIY shed until its closure in 2016, has been described as a bricks-and-mortar Temu. Out of curiosity rather than needing anything, I decided to take a look. A healthy 25-minute walk from Merinda Park station got my step count up to target – not that I need have worried. From outside, the store is a totally unprepossessing sight though press reports say that a large panda mural will shortly adorn the fascia.

Inside it is huge! I walked nearly every aisle, skipping multiple rows of partyware, toys and petware . This took me a full hour, 2,265 steps!

What’s on offer? Think of a mega-size $2/pound shop but much cheaper. No clothes, no food, but you will find furniture. Lots of hardware and tools, housewares, stationery, craft supplies, artificial flowers and much more. They claim to stock 28,000 products. The pricing was, as promised, extraordinary. The base price seems to be 40c (25c US, 20p UK), though the cheapest paintbrushes were 30c.

Having initially decided to buy nothing, just look, I did succumb. My $11.60 spend bought me a premium quality paintbrush (hopefully, yet to be tested), $3.20, a spanner, $1.90, and a LED worklight, $6.50. I bought the last since the pack stated it took 3xAAA batteries and I have (not sure why) a box of 25 looking to be used. Bad news: on opening it up, it actually takes AA batteries – I had to buy some!

Conclusions:

  • Good: Vast selection of merchandise at unbelievable prices.
  • Good: See before you buy and no waiting for a mail order package
  • Good: Unlike Temu you won’t get spammed and there are minimal privacy issues
  • Bad: For some things, product quality is uncertain. In the first week, Consumer Affairs (Trading Standards) seized lots of merchandise that didn’t meet Australian standards including toys with insecure button batteries and dangerous electrical goods. There’s no excuse for this: they should know what standards apply and have already had multiple product recalls in New Zealand, whose standards are probably very similar to ours. They had lots of cordless power tools: would I trust their chargers and batteries? No. But this will probably change: when I was a child ‘Made in Japan’ was synonymous with junk.
  • Bad: As with all goods whose prices are too low to believe, you have to wonder about the working conditions and pay of those in the supply chain. That said, how many higher priced products are made in sweatshop conditions with those down the line creaming off the extra.
  • Threatened?: If Panda Mart builds a large branch chain it’s possibly bad news for Temu, AliExpress and the like, also all the $2 shops, Daiso etc. As I write this, Canadian Dollarama has just bid a generous A$259m for the Australian Reject Shop chain, with the intention of expanding from 390 to 700 stores by 2034, so they obviously think they have nothing to worry about. Kmart should be OK: they’ve worked hard to establish a good reputation for their Anko-branded goods and appliances. Time will tell.

Panda Mart’s Australian presence will double when a second store opens at Preston in Melbourne’s inner north, due to open mid-2025.

Panda Mart, 1280 Thompsons Road, Cranbourne North, 3977

Store exterior
Store exterior
Store interior
Store interior
Foil trays in all shapes and sizes
Foil trays in all shapes and sizes
Artificial flowers
Artificial flowers
30c paintbrushes
30c paintbrushes
My purchases
My purchases
Worklight card (note incorrect battery size)
Worklight card (note incorrect battery size)

On reaching seventy

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At the start of July I reached the Biblical threescore years and ten: Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away (Ps.90.10 NIV). Thankfully most people live beyond eighty but living a long life is a mixed blessing if our last years are marked by physical or mental impairment.

I kicked off my birthday dinner with a short speech reflecting on fifty years of adult life:

  • In my 20s I was a council building inspector and originally expected to be there until I retired. My holiday ambitions went no further than Southend-on-Sea, 40 miles (64 km) east of central London.
  • In my 30s one throwaway comment from a friend’s wife set me on the path of 37 years of self-employment. Another throwaway comment from another friend led to me making my first overseas trip as an adult. Since then I’ve made around 30 UK-USA trips, 15 trips to Australia as a British tourist and a similar number as an Australian visiting the UK, four trips to Africa and some other places too, and, in recent years, multiple cruises.
  • My early years of self-employment did not go well: the low point was reached around my 40th birthday when I was deep in debt and my bank threatened (metaphorically) ‘to send the boys round’. Yet another throwaway comment from yet another friend to me back to uni to study Business Studies and this was a key driver to my business coming good.
  • Five years later I was back in Melbourne enjoying the Christmas sunshine when the notion came to me, ‘you’re so happy here: you should move here’. Finally in 2008 I was able to do so – the best decision I’ve ever made.

Regrets – here’s just a few

If I could re-live my adult life knowing what I know now, what would I change?

Study: I took my first degree with University of Reading, the first year being based at the College of Estate Management in Kensington, then in the new FURS building at Reading Whiteknights. I commuted from home and the experience was an extension of school. Being then very introverted, going to a university that would have required me to live away from home would have been very challenging, but I see now that it would have been good for me.

Home: After leaving university I began to think about having a home of my own. At that time (mid 1970s) the general rule was that you could borrow three times your salary plus, where applicable, one times your fiancée’s/wife’s salary. As I was single this left me able to borrow around £6,000, not enough for the average house. My interest was taken by a house in Warwick Road, Twickenham, a rundown two-up, two-down terraced cottage. This didn’t worry me since I would have enjoyed renovating it but given its condition at that time the only mortgage available was from the council at 17½% interest! My dad’s opinion was ‘you’d be daft to spend £7,000 on a house like that’ and I followed his advice. A year later my salary had all but doubled and interest rates had fallen, so the pain would have been short-lived. Houses in Warwick Road now sell for £600K and more!

Exercise: In the UK once I became self-employed I ran my car as a company car. Under the tax rules then in force failure to do at least 2,500 miles a year resulted in a tax surcharge so I used my car whenever possible. In retrospect it would have been much better to walk to the post office each day but this was in an era long before your smartphone was checking on whether you walked 6,000 steps a day. I also justified using the car on the basis on time saved, but the walk would have been good for my mental as well as physical well-being.

People: I’ve always been guilty of trying to do much in the time available. When it came to church I was always the one walking into meetings a few minutes after they’d started, having tried to do one more thing before leaving home. On Sunday mornings I didn’t count myself late if I slipped into church before the first hymn finished. Now I so wish I’d made time to walk to church and get there ten minutes before the service started, giving myself time to talk to other members, especially the older ones. Those brief conversations might or might not have meant much to me, but many of the older folk might have appreciated a short friendly chat and I would have begun the service in a much more receptive frame of mind.

Cars: I bought my first car as soon as I could. It was old (11 years, which was old then) and an endless money pit. My dad had never held a licence (eyesight problems) and took the view that if he could manage without a car, I could too, so no help was forthcoming. And yet an offer (say) to match my £100 savings would have meant that I could buy a still modest much better car. Later it was me not being prepared to spend more: as a building inspector I drove a fair distance and mileage allowances depended on engine size. I put too much emphasis on choosing cars that would show a profit (a Chrysler Sunbeam 1.3 and Austin Maxi 1750) rather than some cars I might have enjoyed more. At one point I was seriously interested in buying a Saab 96 but let head rule heart.

Relationships: I won’t say too much here. I’m now 70, single, never married. Several times in my life there have been women who I hoped might be more than just friends but it was not to be. Do I regret not having children of my own? In the absence of a strong, stable marriage, no. I have though had the joy of ‘borrowing’ other people’s children as babysitter, twelve years as a Beaver (Joey) Scout leader, and thirteen years (so far) as a church creche helper.

No regrets

The last fifteen years have been the best years of my life and I have never once regretted making the move to Melbourne after 55 years in Twickenham. I’m not rich, but I have no financial concerns, no real health issues compared with many of my contemporaries, a rich varied life (read my other blog entries) and my birthday dinner reminded me of my rich circle of friends. Could anyone want for more?

 

How I became a Building Inspector and why I left

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Note: many of the UK public still refer to a ‘building inspector’ though since the 1970s their formal title has been ‘building control officer’.

After leaving university I joined Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (RBK) as a maintenance surveyor. Initially I joined a team responsible for school building maintenance, then moved on to maintenance of social services buildings. I worked alongside some great people who nearly fifty years on I still fondly remember. But our overall boss was quite the worst person I have ever worked under. Being torn to shreds (usually with no justification) in front of your workmates was a regular occurrence. And yet – Stockholm syndrome at work? – when he called me in and told me that to broaden my experience I was to be seconded to Building Control for three months I was apprehensive about moving into the unknown.

How wrong I was! The atmosphere was so different. After my first day over dinner – I was still living with my parents – my mum observed: “I’ve never heard you talk about work with such enthusiasm; I think you’ll end up staying there”. How right she was! At the end of my secondment my temporary boss, Ken Beer, Borough Planning Officer, offered me a permanent position, along with a salary increment. I said that I would be more than happy to take the job with no increment but he insisted. When I told my old boss about the offer he exploded with rage, accusing me of ingratitude, underhand behaviour, disloyalty and the rest, adding that he would be going to see the Borough Engineer (my ultimate boss) to have my move stopped.

Back from his meeting he called me in and told me that despite his efforts my transfer could not be prevented: to his chagrin there was apparently a provision in the ‘Purple Book’ (local authority employment terms and conditions) that stated that your existing manager could block an intra-LA transfer BUT only if it didn’t involve a salary increase. That was why Ken Beer had insisted on me having the increment.

With my month’s notice served I went back to Building Control where I was to stay for eight years. RBK had been formed in 1965 as a merger of three local councils: Kingston, Surbiton and Malden and Coombe (M&C). Building Control might now occupy one office, but worked as three largely autonomous teams, as if amalgamation had never happened. Each had a District BCO, Assistant BCO and a trainee. Overseeing these was Peter Fuller, Principal Building Control Officer, who exercised a benevolent oversight over the office, largely leaving each District BCO to run their section as they thought fit. I started as M&C assistant, moving up to District BCO a year or two later. Each of us three had a very different approach: Paul went by the book, insisting on plans being correct in every detail; Peter, older than us, relied on his ability to get things right on site (which he invariably managed) and my approach was somewhere in between.

Several happy years passed during which I decided that I could see myself being M&C District BCO for the rest of my working life. I got to know my patch intimately and took a great interest in its history. Then the time came for Peter Fuller to retire. His replacement had a very different, hands on, approach to management. Before too long he said that things could not continue as before, observing (with some justification) that when someone submitted a plan, they were submitting it to RBK and for the response to be quite different depending on where within the borough the site was, was unacceptable. He produced a document setting out exactly how we were to do our jobs.

Us three District BCOs were self starters, each used to running our own shows, and under this new regime the job satisfaction disappeared. Within a relatively short period we all left. In my case it was to embark on nearly forty years of self employment. I joined RBK with the expectation that I’d spend my working life in public service. Instead, my ten years there were just the warm-up act!