Driven. James Martin
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driving instructor. Yes, he actually taught policemen how to drive. When we were kids, if me and my sister were playing up in the back of the car and my mother wasn’t around, he’d suddenly pull some of his old moves and scare the shit out of us. That would shut us up. Back when he was chasing robbers all over the south of England he used to drive a big MkII Jag, like the one Inspector Morse had, only with a blue light and a siren. Literally, you couldn’t get anything further removed from a Citroën Xantia if you tried. I can only think that he felt he got all the driving he wanted to do out of his system when he was in the police force and didn’t see the point of having something more driveable afterwards. Maybe it was enough for him to know he could do it; he didn’t need a flash motor to prove it. Still, a MkII Jag to a BX?
Maybe it has something to do with how he left the police force. He’s a real no-nonsense type of a character, my dad, not one for big shows of emotion or niceties. He’s all about getting the job done and that’s that, and he’s got loads of great stories about giving yobs and nutters a bit of old-fashioned treatment, the kind where the rule book went out the window and the baddies got what was coming to them.
The best was always the one about the armed robbery in Pepworth in Brighton. The robbers escaped in a Transit van and were thought to be heading to London. Everyone knew that if they made it to the capital they’d get away, so the best chance the police had was to stop them en route. My dad was sat in his MkII Jag in a lay-by on the A3, listening to the reports coming in on his radio – details of the robbery, a description of the robbers and their van, which of them was armed, their current location – and he realised they were heading his way. After a while he saw them coming up the hill, and knowing that they had to be stopped before they got much closer to London he decided the only thing to do was throttle down and T-bone them. Which he did. He T-boned them so hard that he knocked their van off the road and into a ditch, and his MkII ended up on top (he said this was probably just as well because it meant they couldn’t open the doors, and if they’d got out they would probably have shot him). It was a good result. When the chasing police cars arrived they nicked the robbers and everyone was happy. But in taking them off the road my dad had rolled his Jag and done his back in, and he had to leave the force as a result. He then did what all ex-coppers do: he ran a pub. Two very successful pubs in fact. Then he moved to York where he ran a Terry’s restaurant (as in the people who make the chocolate oranges), which is where he met my mother, who was going out with Stan the head chef at the time. She dumped him for my dad, the restaurant manager. (Head Chef Dumped for Restaurant Manager – story of my life, that is.) From there he went to Castle Howard, and his interest in cars and driving has rarely been seen since. Which was a shame, because when you’re a kid, getting a new car is the most exciting thing in the world. I can remember as clear as if it were yesterday the day my best mate David Coates’s parents got their MkII Escort. Now that was a cool car. It was only 2 litre, but that didn’t matter, it was just a really cool car. Even the 1.6, the RS, was cool. Some cars are just cool, and the one David Coates’s parents had just bought definitely qualified. I can also clearly remember the day my dad got his new Citroën XM, and we arrived at school just as another good mate of mine was pulling up in his dad’s brand-new bright red Opal Manta (which, as I said, is quite obviously shit now but back then was the bollocks).
Ten years old, my dad’s got a brand-new car, I arrive at school, and the whole car park, David’s MkII Escort and the Manta included, just Top Trumps me.
Even when my dad did come close to getting it right he still managed to find the world’s most uncool cars. I don’t know what happened. I think he must have been hit on the head one day, but he suddenly went from buying nothing but French cars to nothing but Audis. Ordinarily this would have been a very good move, but once again my dad’s love of a bargain did its worst. First we had an Audi 80, in gold, which he got because it was cheap. Of course it was cheap. Who the hell wants to drive a gold car? After that we moved up in the world with an Audi 100. A metallic lime green one. With a lime green interior. Jesus Christ you were buzzing when you got to school if you got a lift in that. No wonder I always preferred to ride my bike the 5 miles to school rather than face the embarrassment (and the headache).
The only time I can ever remember being genuinely excited at the thought of my dad buying a new car was one afternoon in York at the end of a long day touring the showrooms as part of our ritual two-yearly car hunt. For some reason it was just me and my dad going round the usual suspects, looking at the least exciting cars you could ever imagine – well, he was; I was looking at the latest hot hatches. After going to all the Peugeot and Citroën garages he knew, we made an unexpected stop at a very different type of showroom. I knew the garage in question well because I used to pass by it when I walked my gran’s Yorkshire terrier Tuppence. It always had a very fine selection of the latest sports cars on display. Not the kind of place you’d expect to find my father.
We went in, and sandwiched between a white and green Lotus Cortina and a white Ford Escort RS Turbo was a red Lotus Eclat with cream interior. Definitely not my father’s kind of car. My dad was, as always, in a suit, so the salesman was all over him like a rash, and before I knew what was happening he was handing the keys to my dad who looked at me, winked, and asked me if I fancied a spin. My dad wanted to go for a spin, in a Lotus Eclat. I couldn’t believe it. I really, really couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t just surprised, I was in shock.
Off we went down the road in the red Lotus Eclat with the cream leather and suddenly my dad came alive. Speeding down the dual carriageway it was like he was back in his MkII Jag, chasing bad guys and showing what a former advanced police driving instructor could do. It was like the car had instantly taken 20 years off him.
He didn’t buy it of course. It wasn’t French, it certainly wasn’t a bargain, and no doubt my mother would have had more than a few things to say about it. I was a little disappointed when he handed the keys back, but at the same time I was so shocked by the fact that we’d gone out in it in the first place I don’t think I ever got as far as thinking about what might happen at the end of the test drive. It’s a shame really. For a minute there he looked like he was really enjoying himself, like he’d remembered there was more to cars than deals and boot space. I wish he’d rediscover it again, blow off the cobwebs and the stink of garlic and get behind the wheel of a proper car. It’ll never happen though. Last I heard he’d just bought a Citroën Xantia. The cheap one.
6 BMXs, BUNNY-HOPS AND BROWNIES
It’s 1983, I’m ten, I’ve got a regular job washing pots in the kitchens of Castle Howard, and I’ve just got a Raleigh Aero-Pro Burner. Life doesn’t get much better.
You see, the Raleigh Aero-Pro Burner wasn’t just a BMX, it was the coolest BMX there was. Chrome frame, black five-spoke mag wheels, black pads, it was a proper BMXer’s bike – or it was when I was finished with it – and I was a proper BMXer. For me, BMXing was the realisation of my skateboarding dream. I could never really do skateboarding. I had all the gear, I’d tricked my board out and I was ready to pull some moves – ride railings, flip my board, fly off half pipes – but I just couldn’t stand up on the thing. BMXing was much more my thing. I was a natural.
I could do allsorts on my Aero-Pro Burner, especially once I’d tricked it. I put pegs on the front and back, like extended wheel nuts that you’d stand on to do tricks; I used them to do front bunny-hops and rear bunny-hops. I could also do front and rear bunny-hops on the pedals – much harder than on the pegs. I used to do the thing where you’d drive along, hit the front brakes so the rear end would go up, and you’d flick it round and on to something like a bench; if you had enough momentum you could bring the front up as well so the whole bike was on the bench; then you could do some bunny-hops on the pedals and jump back off again. I could even do the move where you applied the front brake, kicked the back end round and literally stepped over the frame as it swung round you. That was pretty cool. I could do loads of other things too – pick it up off the floor just by standing on the pedal, wheelies, all the usual stuff – but those were my coolest moves. I used to change the hand grips, which were a bit of a bugger to do because you had to use a scalpel to get the old ones off (and with my track