The first car I actually owned was an English Ford Anglia, which was part of the whole life changing experience of being actually, formally, married. I'd quit college within a half semester of the teaching training that would have welded me forever into the dreadful chains of the bourgeoisie, finagled my way out of military service, and there I was, a confirmed rebel driving to my first real job loading trucks in a dry goods warehouse. I was unused to a stick shift and every start from a red light was an adventure for everyone around me, but the Anglia was cute and, well, different.

I'd had to take the job because the custom jewelry shop my wife and I had started using her student grant money was doing surprisingly well but not really paying the bills. We operated out of an old store front below the five floor walk-up which was our first apartment, and when I tell you that the fire escape was a rickety wooden affair that was a death trap in the winter ice you kind of get a sense of our lifestyle. Ah, Bohemia.

We moved from Buffalo to Connecticut for reasons which still escape me, where I promptly totaled the Anglia by rear-ending a student driver dithering over making a turn while my wife and I were arguing. That kind of set a pattern- called away from my easel to drive my wife to work I took an icy bend too quickly and totaled my car, a nondescript convertible which probably deserved a better ending. The somewhat bemused mechanic who had supplied us with a string of vehicles near the end of their lives offered me what was to be the coup du grace for the marriage...a dull yellow VW microbus.

Those of you who've never owned one cannot imagine what the VW bus was in the Sixties. It was like an under-powered magic carpet whisking you away from the dull tedium of a nine to five existence to a gypsy life on the open road. I mean, you could actually LIVE in the thing. I proved that one February in the Connecticut woods where I camped out after walking out of the marriage. I was young, tough and indestructible.

When Spring came I set out for Buffalo in the company of a young lady who wanted to be a Composer.
I sold the VW bus when the bottom fell out and worked my way out of debt and back into the same Dry Goods Warehouse I had left previously. There I moldered until a merger with another firm saw all of the younger employees sacked. I divorced wife number 3 and bought a Rambler station wagon with my severance pay and set out for California.

By this time things were getting frighteningly chaotic. Why did I keep getting married, anyway? Why, more to the point, did all these women keep wanting to marry ME? The answer to that last one, at least, was clear- marriage is like California- you think it is going to be the answer to your lack of purpose and when you get there, there's the ocean- there's really no where else to go. So I concluded, but I wasn't going to accept that. I sold the Rambler and took off for Europe.

For the next ten years the only thing I drove was trucks owned by one Moving Firm after another. I shuttled back and forth between Europe and America in the off season, until on one moving job I met the woman who was destined to be my fourth and final wife. She wanted children and a smallholding in the country, I had been sterilized. She said let's have it reversed. I said that is impossible. So did 99% of the Urologists we applied to. Finally one said he was willing to give it a try, and dammit if he wasn't successful. See? Destiny. We got married in an hysterical blend of a traditional Jewish wedding and New Age mysticism, and promptly moved to the UK, where in addition to two memorable children (see my WU Growing up with Autism) and an endless parade of animals we adopted a series of eccentric vehicles.

Let's see- there was a Mini Automatic because my wife had never driven a stick shift. There was a tooth missing on the starter gear and every so often I had to remove the radiator grill and crank it into position by hand. A green Saab with a stick shift on the steering column which ran fine until the radiator boiled over because of a faulty waterpump, which meant you had to stop and let it cool and pour more water in. Inevitably I forgot the water at last whereupon the whole thing went into melt down. Then there was a yellow Volvo Daf. This strange hybrid had a belt drive, two heavy duty drive belts under the chassis, and drive ratios were adjusted by a big steel spindle that was driven apart by centrifugal force as the car accelerated. It sounded like a sewing machine gone mad at speed but the mechanics fascinated me and I even learned to change the drive belts when they broke. Next came a series of Volvo Station Wagons, or 'Estates' as they are known in the UK. We loved them all dearly and discovered there are few things that cannot somehow be crammed into one. Once we rescued our two sheep from a farmer who had said he would look after them and treat them well when we moved to Wales. My wife woke up one night certain they were being maltreated so nothing would do but to drive to the farm in question and load both of them into the back of the Estate. I climbed in after and to keep them calm as we drove sang cowboy songs for three quarters of an hour while they blinked their slit pupiled eyes and shat copiously.

There were of course other cars, at various times, but none so memorable. I still drive a Volvo Estate, the redoubtable 240, which cost me a small fortune to get through the last inspection, so perhaps it is time for a change. Anyone know where I can get a used VW Bus? With or without moon roof...