My Dada and I (oh and something about ‘Hands Up Billy’ by Jon Tregenna)
“If Frank Cawley couldn’t fix it, it was well and truely f***ed” Graham Roberts.
“Remember Frank well. We bought our first car off him ( £60) black Morris Minor 1965 922 OOK. Couple of quid down and a couple of bob a week! Goodness knows if we ever finished paying for it – that was Frank for you! He and Mrs C came on my tour to Holland, he was such a laugh. They won the Mr and Mrs Contest we put in one night! I remember one question they asked Mrs C was how many times does Frank’s big end bang in the night !” Jenny Hill.
“He painted my first guitar for me, about 45 years ago – Ford Aubergine!” Chris Gandy.
My Dad was a marvellous mirthful motor mechanic (or an ‘artist’ as he liked to be known and it’s true, he was a painter and a poet, but if he couldn’t get the half shaft off because he didn’t have the correct puller, well he’d make one to remove it, charge you about a fiver, and throw the newly made puller in too in case you might need it again.)
We were a poor family.
I served time (sic) with him and I never ever want to grind in again another valve, although no one does decokes anymore do they? Another lost art, like replacing piston rings (delicately) or wearing two tone suede driving gloves.
My Dad’s advice for successfully servicing a car was to wipe it with an oily rag, empty the ash tray, and move the driver’s seat back a little. The customer would be pleased – the look, the aroma, the drive, would all seem improved.
He was joking of course. Though I do remember him employing both Fuller’s Earth and ‘ladies’ nylons to quieten overly noisy diffs now and again. Actually his ideas for the use of ‘ladies’ nylons in a motoring context seemed inexhaustible, bizarre, and baffling. But usually germane.
There was the old ‘when the fan belt snaps use the nylons to save a head gasket blow out’ trope.
(A ruse I employed once when on holiday in Ireland with my wife. The car was a Mark IV Austin Healey Sprite. The gasket blew one night in a town square when we were boxed in. I was truffling about when a couple of Gardai approached thinking perhaps we were trying to steal it.
“Is that your sports?” enquired one of them.
“Yes,” I replied, “this other car is blocking us in.”
“No problem, sir,” said the other who promptly broke into the offending car and pushed it out of our way, “safe journey home you two.”
We pootled back to the Fishguard ferry, burping and jerking at round 35 mph, where my Dad met us and towed us back to the Dock. We’d unexpectedly and expensively had to spend the previous night in Rosslare’s finest hotel {the lonely one}. I had Beef Bourguignon, red wine, too much Guinness and spent most of the late hours alternating vomiting with poking the lumps down the outlet in the sink with the bottom of a toothbrush. I retched with each thrust of the brush. I’m not proud of this event.)
Then there was an ingenious one – when the undriven windscreen wiper ceases to function, tie nylons tightly between the broken one and the driven one and, bingo, problem sorted.
Talking of ‘ladies’ accoutrements, Dad had a sure fire way of starting a car using nail varnish, when all else had failed. Yeah, I thought when he told me about it, yeah, really? But, near unbelievably, a year or two later I actually managed to start an Austin 1100 using just that stuff. I think I am still a hero in Twickenham. I wish I’d got the woman’s address.
Then there was Dad’s advice of how to improvise with jam when missing a gasket on the thermostat housing of a Mini, which was useful in the Alps when the motor overheated and I was surrounded by goats eager to eat car parts.
We were both salesmen too, in the motor trade (as Jon and Sir Paul rightly refer to it), my Dad and I. But his heart wasn’t in the selling, he was too soft, and an artist of course. The ne’er do wells, the poets, the soft-centred scaffolders and so forth who inhabit the Dock (which could well be Alan Warner’s fictitious “Port”), still speak well of his welding skills. And his soft-spoken absurd remarks
My Dad once sold a car to a chap who was heading north. The car lost first gear and developed a big end knock when it reached Liverpool. I was despatched to shepherd the chap back and, if the car was to give up the ghost, to tow it home. My Dad chose me because not only was I gullible and cheap but I also had a Bedford CA van which would give the enterprise, so he thought, a sort of legitimate veneer, after all he was the ‘proprietor’ of Universal Garage. I had the van because, in time honoured fashion, it had enabled me to join a band as the drummer. I had no sense of rhythm, was tone deaf, and couldn’t keep a beat, but I had a van.
Anyway, the chap’s car gave out around about Aberystwyth. I towed him from there. Not long after I found myself having to change the clutch on a Bedford CA van. Lovely van though. Three gear column change. Sliding doors that fell off at the most inopportune of moments. It was a true Orange County lumber truck.
These are the sort of memories that came tumbling back, things I wanted to share with him, when I read Jon Tregenna’s new book, ‘Hands Up Billy’. Ostensibly a tale about the characters that populate a car showroom and a repair garage in a “brown town” in the Welsh valleys, it is also a palimpsest in reverse, a tale where the socio-political comment is deliciously disguised beneath the amusing goings on of the novel’s disparate bunch of bods.
Brilliantly and cleverly observed, the people and places jump out of the page (yes it’s like one of those pop-up books you had as a small child – weren’t they wonderful?), it’s all so real, so joyful, nostalgic, and funny. These are people we know. Pinned like posts (not butterflies) on our personal wall, we can laugh at them yet know also that they are only another version of ourselves, an alternative Universal Garage where men who identify as sheepskin coats wear micro dresses, and Universal Truths are there for plucking, but not with a torque wrench.
It’s a great tale. A ripping read. With a cinematic quality. And with sly meta musings that touched my psychedelic soul.
Jon Tregenna – singer, songwriter, novelist, playwright, publicist, polymath, wearer of questionable fancy dress outfits, briber of journalists (thank you but I assume you might withhold some of the crispy oncers after my penultimate observation, but what the hell, I’ll suffer for my heart) – has written a real page turner (nothing remarkable about that – aren’t all books page turners?) that is unputdownable (something to do with the glue in the spine I believe) and a wonderful, engrossing read.
Available from tregni.wales or by Go Ogling ‘Jon Tregenna’.
Now where’s my full Welsh breakfast? But please not one with beans served in tiny shiny buckets. Swiss Tony might approve but I won’t.
Have you now or have you ever had a relationship with cars and/or people? Have you ever thought of saving the planet whether it was cost-effective or not? Have you ever thought it’s all held together with alligator leather? Well buy this book. If you are disappointed remember you’ve got a three month’s warranty.
Photo: Lesley Clark.
Francis John Cawley 1923 – 2004
bbskone 