CARS I HAVE OWNED

CARS I HAVE OWNED

My first car was a Ford Escort

In Electric Blue, Mark One –

They’re quite trendy now

My mum and dad

Bought it for me

The April before

My eighteenth birthday

One month after

Passing my test

It had no rear demister

The radio was

Bought by my sister

You could open it with

A half-pence piece

Full of forgotten friends

It covered many miles

That one summer

And, Boy! Could it shift

Spun it into the back

Of a builder’s yellow Passat

My second car was a Ford Cortina

In Navy Blue, Mark Three

Like the one in “The Sweeney”

It saw me through college

Back and forth

To South Wales

Until I was twenty-two

James the guitarist

Welded it better

One memorable summer

My German teacher

Once told us that they

Were ahead of their time

I once flung a hammer

At the ground

In a car park

Whilst fixing its radiator

When unemployed

I couldn’t afford to fix it

So it got scrapped

My third car was a Ford Capri

In ghastly beige, Mark Two –

With a brown vinyl roof

And a jacked-up

Rear axle

My sister found it for me

And my mum paid for it

I was still on the dole

It had a duff starter motor

Shortly after I got it

I parked it outside

A friend’s house and

Someone backed into its door

I went to a scrapyard

And got replacement doors

Drove it to Warrington

Where it was supposed

To be repaired

I never saw it again -

I only had it a month

Then I had another Cortina

In bright orange, a Mark Five

Though people tell me

It was salmon pink -

And use of a white Fiesta

Though that belonged

To the woman

I lived with at that time

She left me to move in with

A bloke with a white Capri -

Four years and more I had

A crimson Scirocco, Mark Two

It got written off

By a Dutch lorry

One evening on the A6 -

So I bought a useless Rover

Back from Cornwall

It devoured petrol

And the engine seized

Within a few weeks

I shared a diesel Fiesta

In burnished gold

With the woman whose

House I lodged in for a while -

Moving out, I got myself

A little red Volvo

Three-something-something

Which lasted a while -

My colleagues dubbed it

“Clunky the Wonder Car” -

And then a red Volvo Four-

Something-something replaced it

We called that “Clunky Too” -

Since then I have driven

“Blinky the Wonder Car” -

So-called because

Its bulbs kept blowing -

And the car we call “New Car”

Even though I’ve driven

It for five years now

Martin A W Holmes, September 2016