Ford Consul Classic

This was an expensive "experiment".

On arriving at Southampton, a brand new Ford Consul Classic was waiting on the quay for us. My father had ordered it from Trinidad.

Launched in May 1961 it only lasted until 1963 and just over 100,000 cars built at Dagenham. It was not a popular car. And as we were to learn not a reliable one. The smaller Ford Anglia, also with the strange rear window was to prove much more popular.

Normally my parents would be shipping this back to Trinidad when they returned but it proved so bad that they sold it in the UK before they returned.

This is the only known photograph with the car in it. It was taken just before we arrived at my first school in the UK. Aged 8 and 14 days, I was about to learn what a boarding school was. During that first night, I developed an incredibly bad rash all over my body and was initially put in solitary of the school infirmary. Turned out to be a psychological rather than physical health problem and it went within a couple of days.

It was not an easy farewell from my parents, my father to shortly fly back to Trinidad while my mother stayed on in the UK until January 1963 so that she could take me out for a day at half term and in December, we would drive in the car to her mother's in Germany for Christmas. And then the horrendous return journey in January, in that most notorious Winter of 1962/3. Dumping me on the school train at Paddington, she returned to Trinidad. I was to see my father again in late July 1963.