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Memory drive
I felt a wave of nostalgia when I saw the Vauxhall Wyvern in the February edition. I hadn’t realised just how deeply that car’s silhouette had imprinted itself on me, bringing back so many childhood memories.
It was our family car in the late 1950s, and it had its quirks. If we stopped for fuel, it would be a good half hour before the engine had cooled enough for my father to coax it into life again, something I found infuriating if we were on the way to the seaside. It had class, though, particularly after the basic Morris 8 which preceded it, as now we no longer had to pack all our holiday clothes in a tin trunk which was strapped on a rack at the back.
I found this photograph of our Wyvern (above): my mother, my brother and me on the Snake Pass in 1958. Where was the rest of the traffic? They were, indeed, different times.
Soaring success
Jenni Murray doesn’t need to waste money on trying to move a Concorde to central London (January). There is already a beautifully restored and lovingly maintained example just 17 miles from Westminster, at Brooklands Museum. There she can go on board, sit in the seats and – if Jenni partakes in one of the special events – even indulge her dream of sipping Champagne while doing so. She could book to fly the Concorde simulator on which all British Concorde pilots trained, with a Concorde captain as her instructor.
And if Jenni can’t get to Brooklands, she could visit any of the other Concordes in the country – at Duxford, Yeovilton, Bristol, Manchester and East Fortune.
Birthday bonus
Oh, the thrill of watching that silver bird sliding across the sky above our house twice a day. Thank you, Jenni Murray, for reviving this memory and my never-to-be-fulfilled dream to fly Concorde to New York.
A vicarious thrill was mine, though, when my father flew supersonic around the UK with the Queen Mother in celebration of her 80th birthday. But for a mistake on my grandfather’s part, he may well have missed the trip. As a British Airways employee sharing Her Late Majesty’s birthday, 4th August, he received a special invitation to join her. My grandmother was always adamant that my father was born on 3rd August and that he was registered for the wrong date!
Unhappy memories
In Cornwall, our memories of Concorde are not happy at all. When the supersonic bangs first started in 1976, they caused much speculation. No one would admit what the cause was. The aviation minister must have received hundreds of letters when we realised what it was. At 8.45pm every night we braced ourselves. Houses shook, cracks appeared in buildings, and greenhouses and
