The MG Magnette ZB
W HAT a car! It sat on the drive outside my study window like a wellbred sheepdog, crouching, poised, waiting for its master’s call to action. She was the 1956 64hp Magnette ZB. Inside you found comfortable leather seating, superb steering, cornering like a dog after the rabbit. She would do 80mph with power to spare. Not that I can remember travelling at 80, but that’s what the experts tell me.
Many felt that she had broken tradition, losing the familiar sporty look, low-slung and roofless with headlights squatting on mudguards. Yet in the parking lot by the track she still fitted calmly into the sporty scene. She carried five of us round the country on many summer holidays, roof rack and boot loaded to bursting point with luggage and all the must-have paraphernalia of childhood.
Our two boys, whilst not exactly falling over themselves to do so, liked washing her. In the shot above they are assisted by our older son's friend from across the road. Our daughter was otherwise engaged upon, I feel sure, some household duty. A dutiful lot, our three.
I don’t remember breakdowns happening; the only incident I remember causing causing the furrowed brow was when I had visited my very elderly parents and taken them out for a spin. We stopped as near as possible to a coastal beauty spot, parking hard up against an ancient stone wall. I got out via the front passenger door, helped the parents get out and went with them for a gentle stroll down the hill to the beach area and had a lovely hour or two. We returned to the car, I flourishing my keys and preparing to help my parents get back in. But I came to an abrupt halt at the front passenger door by which I had exited and carefully set so that it locked when closed. It was, very naturally, as I had left it - locked from the inside.
I had never registered that the ZB passenger door handle is not blessed with a keyhole.
And, do you know, I cannot remember how we eventually got in.
Choirboys
To have sung in a very good church choir for several years has been, for me, one of the great delights of this life. Our choir was taught and conducted by a Choirmaster who was a born teacher; his manner and his technique were the chief reason for the choir’s excellence and for the subsequent invitations to sing the services in our land’s cathedrals during holiday months.
Sixteen men and roughly 30 boys attended weekly practice sessions in the little first-floor choir vestry above the main church - a not very beautiful Victorian brick building; the Choirmaster rehearsed the boys alone for about three-quarters of an hour and then we men would arrive. For fifteen minutes both men and boys practiced together. The boys then left and we men continued, sometimes for more than an hour.
We sang for both the morning and the evening services. In the mornings the vestry gradually filled with a buzzing crowd of men and boys creating an ocean of flapping blue cassocks being donned and white surplices being hoisted over heads, hair being combed and music books being collected from a cupboard.
Naturally, the boys cared nothing for the state of their hair. The Choirmaster’s constant efforts to make themselves tidy bore little fruit; one Sunday morning I took it upon myself to put things right with my own comb and as weeks went by they gradually took the thing for granted and bowed their head for my attention as I approached.
Watching them processing calmly and in perfect symmentry ahead of us, it was difficult to connect them with the same milling, chattering bunch of kids of a few moments before. Eyeing them from my position in the Decani stalls opposite I frequently caught sight of small breaks in form among the Cantoris trebles; the nudge that a boy would give his neighbour in reproof for a slight mistake or merely a sidelong glance and a pair of lowered eyebrows. Or possibly an amused smile.
Singing the services in our own church was satisfying enough; singing in the glorious, vast, deliciously-echoing space of a centuries-old cathedral was the ultimate prize, an experience that had the power to bring tears.
Stanley Sharpless: The Test
Sitting at my desk one morning in the new and exciting Technical Publications Department in the early 1950s, I looked up to see the chief editor coming over. He adopted what I was to discover was his favourite discussion position: feet wide apart, both elbows on the edge of my desk and his bottom pointing to the roof.
‘Just been in with Sharpless,’ he said. ‘And he wants to see you.’
Something lurched inside me. What had I done?
‘It's something about your job.’ The lurch came again, a bit higher up.
I had been in the department for about a fortnight, learning the job - writing instruction leaftlets for the company’s photographic materials and chemicals.
In his fairly impressive office Stanley Sharpless, Ad Manager and now famous for his comic lines, 'Cocoa coursing through their veins', motioned to me. 'Sit down, Paul.' He flicked a finger.
My mouth as dry as a dustbag, I sat down in the chair indicated and waited for the bad news. Through the open windows floated the growling of Kingsway traffic.
'I've had an idea,' he said. He straightened out a long strip of paper on his desk. 
Plain paper covered in pencil notes on both sides. It had been concertina'd into five or so folds to form a four-inch square. 'A lot of people just don't seem to understand how take a good picture. How to hold the camera, how to avoid sun-glare and blurring and so on. And I want a free leaflet to be available in every Kodak dealer's shop. In England and overseas. We’re going to call it TRAVEL TIPS BY KODAK so, ostensibly, it’s for people about to go on holiday. Here's a rough I've done.' He pushed the paper across the desk. 'Take it. Spend some time with it. I've scribbled the headings all the way through. And I want jolly little illustrations - watercolour sketches - dotted amongst the text. All right?’
He smiled as he said it, and it was a friendly smile.
As I went into my own office all five of the other authors were grinning at me. One of them couldn't suppress giggles.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
They broke into a little cheer. I gathered that the ‘Travel Tips by Kodak’ leaflet was by now famous - it had been discussed for weeks and was known as 'Stanley's Tips'. They’d all been waiting to see who got the job.
Over the next few weeks I finished it and, in the process, learned how to handle good-natured cracks about tips and travelling.