The year is 1989. Judy, myself and our three children are in England. We have arrived three days previously, and intend to spend a year here. We are staying in a B&B we had booked from Australia. We had picked this B&B out from a book of English B&Bs entitled "Off the Beaten Track." It is a good three mile walk to the nearest town with a railway station, and it occurs to me that perhaps a book with a title of "Off the Beaten Track" might not have been such a good idea for a family of five in a new country with little money and no car.
By luck, we quickly find a house to rent in the nearby town of Lewes, and when Judy is at the Lewes Town Hall arranging school for the children, she discovers that one of the council workers has a car for sale. A little brown Austin Allegro for 100 pounds. One hundred pounds!! A crazy price by Australian standards. It's a bargain, and after a test drive around a car park, we snap it up. The line from The Who song "Magic Bus" rings in my ears: "You can have the magic bus for 100! English! Pounds!!"
On a wet and drizzly day, we take delivery of the Allegro and pile in en famille, I switch on the heater, flick on the wipers, press the switch which I guess de-mists the rear window, and we head off through the steaming drizzle towards Brighton, a family in an enverlope of dry and cosy warmth, the closest thing we have to call a home in this country.
Thus begins a relationship with the car that we come to know as "The Allegro." The Allegro soon demonstrates that it is a quirky beast. For example, on that first day, once in Brighton, funny things start happening with the electrics. The engine begins cutting out for no reason, and the wipers seem to be trying to send us a strange cryptic message in halting semaphore. After about 10 minutes of this, it occurs to me to try switching off the rear window de-mister. Those things really chew up the power. Sure enough, once that is switched off, normality returns for the time being. Never the less, it's a wake up call, and I join the RAC at first opportunity.
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Over the following months, often the Allegro would experience a bad behavior event. It would simply decide to run very badly and act like it was firing on two cylinders. But the bad behavior would stop just the right side of conking out completely, and it would always let you limp home at no faster than 20 miles an hour. After a day's rest though it would burst back into perfectly well-behaved life and continue on as though butter wouldn't melt in its mouth. As if to say "Running badly? Me? I don't think so. You must have imagined it."
After some time though, it began to misbehave consistently, so I booked it into a garage for a service. I returned late in the day to pick the car up. I rocked up to the counter and asked after the Allegro. The receptionist said "The Allegro. Yes. The mechanic wants to speak to you about that car." She then ushered me into a darkened room and showed me to a seat. After a time the mechanic entered. He didn't turn on the light. He sat in a chair opposite, a dim figure in the gloom, and proceeded to reel off all of the things that were wrong with the Allegro. "I've done all I can for her, and you might get a few more weeks out of her, but no more than that. As you can see, there's no point in spending any more money on her."
I drove off in somber mood. But the Allegro lasted three more relatively trouble-free months, or at least three months where it was fairly well behaved. And when I bought a replacement car from a dealer, with one hundred english pounds as a trade in price for the Allegro.
Between the time that the replacement car purchase was finalised and the time that we could pick the new car up, the Allegro blew a head gasket. But it was still up for the limping trip at 10 miles an hour to the dealers where I could pick up our replacement car. Luckily it wasn't far.
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