We had one of the models once … Goliath.

Curious thing, this, but every subject, every history has some curious details but it’s only when the curious details of one are combined with the curious details of another that a third truth emerges, of curiosity value.

My dad fought in the war … as far as I can gather, with two armies, and so did I years later, but in peacetime. Those two, my parents, were of an era when gollywogs were fine to have, Noddy and Big Ears was the reading and my parents warned me to have nothing to do with credit cards, as it was giving money to the Js. I have no credit card today.

Now that’s interesting, given that my father was in active combat against the Germans and Japs. He never told me his views on the commies but I noticed that when they (parents) went to Australia, he used to watch some man called B.A. Santamaria on the box, part of a party called DLP. Third party of the right in other words. So what he made of my youthful, student Fabianism I have no idea … we did not talk much.

Another thing was he bought a series of German cars, feeling, as many people did, that German engineering was superior. I had this attitude in Russia. As for myself? Always anti-communist … just how I reconciled that with my student leftism I’m not sure. My dad went back to Austins, then onto Hondas … think he was always after workable tech.

There’s one story which must have dashed dad’s confidence in German engineering. When I was 14 and at that time in Oz, we went for a trip Melb to Gold Coast and the car broke down halfway … was it the Goliath or VW? Can’t remember. We took an overnight coach back to Melb and that’s this other tale some know of where I spent the night on the back seat with two nineteen year old lasses, discovering the joys of female proximity, which set my mind forever.

B.A. Santamaria was a curiosity, as he was very pro-Catholic and we were nominally CofE, mother going Methodist as that church was nearer, geographically. Father was a Mason for awhile.

Just been looking up Goliath. Seems likely that my father was looking at VWs and/or smaller Beemas in Britain and Oz and I’d say the dealer, who may have been German, might have persuaded him. Just guessing. Curious parents, my parents. No wonder I’m a curiosity.

Father was at one stage a carpenter, a good one, saw him in operation, old style tools, never a toolmaker though, so my boat some years back was not entirely amateur … I’ve built fences, sheds but not a house yet. I did build a large pyramid once.