Very handy

I know, it doesn’t look very interesting.  It’s the back of my hand.  But there’s a story here, if you care to read on.  I’ll fully understand if you don’t though.

People who know me now as an upright and respectable person may be surprised to know I wasn’t always that way.  As a lad, I was a bit of a tearaway, and got into a few scrapes.  Nothing serious, you understand, mainly just the sort of things that daft lads get up to.  My only brush with the law was pretty minor; I got an official warning for drinking under age.  Apparently the police weren’t too bothered about the fact I was under 18, more the place we were in; a pub frequented by ‘ladies of the night’ and general low-life’s.  I did a few other things that I’m certainly not going into here but which embarrassed or annoyed my parents, so the evening when my mother answered the doorbell to see a policeman standing there her immediate reaction was “What has he done now?”  In fact, I’d been in a car crash.  Four of us lads had gone out for the evening in one of the lads’ father’s car which he frequently used; an Austin 1300.  We were all around our 18th birthdays and were looking for a room to hire for a party, but the pub where we asked first didn’t have one available.  We drove off and a little way along the road spotted three girls hitch-hiking, so we picked them up.  They were going to a disco at the local airport so we said we’d go along too.  It was a bit of a squeeze; seven of us in a small car so if nothing else, it was illegal.  Anyway, the lad who was driving was a bit of a show-off and attempted, should we say, a rather unwise manoeuvre.

The result was that he rolled the car.  It certainly rolled over once and I suspect, more than once.  It landed upright but how anyone got out alive is a mystery.  The roof was squashed down to the bottom of the windows so the whole car was only about three feet high.  I think the police thought that the fact the car was overcrowded actually helped us, as no-one was thrown about.  Miraculously, I was the worst one hurt, with fairly deep cuts on this hand where it had gone through the window and caught the road.  You can hardly see them now but for many years they were noted as a ‘distinguishing feature’ on my passport.

I was reminded of all this as it all happened on May 1st, 1971, exactly 50 years ago, at about 7.00 in the evening.  I don’t think I’ll be going out in a car tonight.


Still working from my mobile phone with a bad signal, so apologies for the lack of comments.