Maud

Austin Seven ARR 1936-38

Click on the link to see some in their pristine rehabilitated state.

This of course, was what dear old Maud was supposed to end up looking like too, only it didn't quite turn out that way...

The day we got her was so very exciting! To be honest, I didn't exactly know what a 'mord' was, and I was still searching for it long after we hooked the car up to bring it home. I can remember driving down the street, towing her, I can remember the immense excitement of washing her on the front lawn - that's me above, proudly posing with our now shiny clean new possession.

Maud's next journey was from the front lawn, under the carport, past Mum and Dad's bedroom, around the apple trees and the automatic rotary washing line, and up two wooden planks through the french windows and thus into the shed, where she was to reside 'for now', until Peter got a bit older and could help Dad fix her up. The shed; which was to become her final resting place, as she sank slowly each year deeper into the dust and cobwebs.

The story goes that with Peter off at boarding school, there just wasn't the time to fix her up. That and, I suppose, the march of time itself, the way all humans imagine an endless vista of time ahead of them, someday, when I'm not so busy...

Dear Maud, stuck forever in her shed, forgotten, but not unloved! She became the greatest weapon in our arsenal of childhood imagination. She was the getaway car, the Royal Coach, the Palace itself even. She was, memorably, the storehouse for the home-made ginger beer, tucked inside her back seat where perhaps, it would do the least damage if the bottles exploded. Again.

She was a revelation for childhood guests. We'd bring them to the shed, which was a little spooky, and she'd loom out of the darkness, her headlights bright in the reflected glow of the sunlight, but caked with cobwebs, her grill, devoid of the famous Austin Seven sign, almost grinning at us. Inside her dusty interior, her leather seats were cracked, the stuffing and springs poking out. He wheel turned a little, and if we stretched really far, our little legs could reach her brake and clutch as we yanked her gear stick around.

Then the games would begin, and Maud would transport us to wherever we wanted to go, our own Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - and we believed that if we wished hard enough, Maud would burst out of her prison and fly...