Page 133 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

The journey was arranged. Uniroyal’s distribution manger Brian Daltry deserves good
mention in our tale, as he guided us as kindly as he could from the very beginning of the
Uniroyal saga right through to its bitter end.

It was, as far as we can remember about 1975, money for us, was as always in short
supply and the family car was a fantastic but very second hand, red 3.4 litre Mk 2 Jaguar
saloon.
Motor trade contacts had been the source of our family vehicles for years and although
this one came from a private source, its history was right!
It cost the princely sum of £250. Not the smartest motor having a badly burnt left hand
front wing leaving the paint finish somewhat “rippled”. Otherwise mechanically perfect.
432 GFU was an inspiration in many ways.

Harry Thorne, we found out later had been its first owner. How is that for a coincidence. It
had been in an accident in later life and been rebuilt by Bill Mc Comb the local lorry body-
builder who supplied all the bodies to our new lorries as time went by.
We all loved this car.
It always performed like a
dream. Ruth had been using it
to commute to work as Sister
in Charge of Spilsby’s Grace
Swan Hospital and it had
already been twice to Faslane
on Scotland’s Clyde coast on
holidays with the Cox family.

Once towing our Merlin/Rocket
dinghy “Bamboozle”.
I must digress a little here to
illustrate about what we called
the “halcyon” days.

Roads were relatively quiet, fuel was not so expensive, taxation was manageable. There
was no breathalyser although no one drank to excess and it was the huge influx of extra
vehicles of all sorts that necessitated the extra restrictions as times changed.

Oh, I almost forgot, speed cameras had not even been thought of!
On our last trip from Faslane we had finished the journey on the A1 from Doncaster to
Newark, a particularly good piece of road in those days and easily capable of allowing us
to maintain speeds in excess of 125 mph for the whole distance.
Out of all the numerous cars we have owned over the years, this is the one we all like the
best

TO FRANCE
That same Jaguar was our transport to France. My first trip to mainland Europe and my
first time driving on the right.
We left the business which by this time involved tyre collections in the East Midland and
North East of England and a regular potato contract with Messrs John Hobster of Boston,
in the capable hands of Albert (no 1 driver) and Michael, Ruth’s youngest brother and our
mechanic.

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