My musings about my family’s Morris Minor prompted this lovely blog post on the Nicci French blog:

My own childhood experience was entirely different. My parents’ first car, bought in 1970, was a Morris Traveller. Six years later it was the car I learned to drive on. Three things I remember about it:

1) It was the car with wood on it. When we took it to Sweden, crowds used to gather in the street to stare at it, touch it, to see that it was real. The Swedes were keen on wood and keen on cars, but didn’t believe in mixing them.

2) When we travelled to Sweden we took a ferry from Newcastle. Getting the car on to the ferry involved each car being lifted into the hold by a crane. It took a long time.

3) Changing gears on the Traveller, I had to learn a special skill called double declutching. It’s not a skill that I’ve needed to call on much in later life. (I couldn’t believe there’d be an entry on double declutching in Wikipedia, but there bloody is.)

Of course there is!

LATER: Quentin can even remember the registration number of his family’s Morris Traveller.