It was the Rolls Royce of pedal cars.
Actually it WAS a Rolls Royce pedal car, all shiny and dark brown and when I was given it for Christmas age 3 I wouldn't go near it. However, I got over that and loved it. My Grandad installed flashing indicators in it, I practised parallel parking and everything. When my sister was given a much more modern one we'd go up and down the street together, pedal furiously to the park and so on. There are photos of us washing our vehicles in the back garden.

I loved that car, but grew out of it both mentally and physically. For many years it languished in the shed (imagine the opening scenes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) but I knew it was there, just waiting until I had a shed of my own to keep it in.

And then, when I was 14, I suddenly saw it... on the way to the dump with all the other 'rubbish' as Mum and Dad cleared the shed out and though I pleaded for it to be spared it still went to its doom. Not even to charidy (well, we didn't do that in the 70s did we, unless it was Blue Peter?)

I was heartbroken for days, so much so that my parents felt very guilty, which while it was a satisfying state of affairs did not bring old Rolly (which I never called it) back to me.

My parents STILL feel bad about it, in fact. I have told them that the first volume of my autobiographies will be called 'Pedal Car and Tinned Peaches*' - it never fails to make my Mum cry 'Oh, DON'T' in an anguished way.

How I relished it when I sent them a postcard of a very, very similar pedal car from the v&A, just to rub it in.

*The tinned peaches reference is to another childhood trauma involving sitting in front of a bowl of them 'until you eat them.' I didn't eat the evil, slug-like repellent items in the end, though. I was very stubborn. Even now they make me shudder.
(singingringingtree Living in the past., Tue 19 Aug 2008, 22:12, 4 replies)

Move into the country
Gonna eat me a lot of peaches!
( jim_bob can herd cats., Wed 20 Aug 2008, 7:46, closed)

millions of peaches...
...peaches for me!

*click*
(twiceydrinker hmmm is it pint time?, Wed 20 Aug 2008, 8:20, closed)

peaches come from a can
they were put there by a man





(in a factory downtown)
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 20 Aug 2008, 8:24, closed)

tinned peaches are nyom.

( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Wed 20 Aug 2008, 12:25, closed)