The Innocence Of The Young....... And The Stupid

I grew up as a child in the 1970s. Not everyone owned a car and depending where you lived; it wasn't essential to own one. I seldom travelled in one. There were many reasons for this. Firstly, I suffered with very bad car sickness, which I believe started as a result of a smoker of a pipe or cigar who would drive a car my mother and father would travel in. Back then, they were very much into selling stuff at markets, car boot sales and jumble sales. I would resent them getting up early on a Sunday morning and disappearing without me. On the rare occasion I was awake, I would travel with them, but the smell of the burning tobacco in the car would make me feel sick. Understandable they would discretely leave without me.

The smell never left me and even though people tend not to smoke in cars these days, at the age of 44, I still feel sick when travelling by bus, coach or car. With most people it is the motion, but with me it is the smell. I can't explain what the smell is, but the nauseous feeling can overwhelm me rapidly, and I need to get out.

The second reason I seldom travelled by car while I was growing up was where I lived. I grew up in Leigh Park, which was a large council estate in the borough of Havant in Hampshire. Leigh Park is/was one of the biggest council estates in Europe. There was nothing to do and nothing to see. Why would anyone need to get in a car and travel to another part of some Cold War construction?

During my teens my phobia and disinterest in the car continued. If I needed to get anywhere I would either walk or cycle. If I needed to travel to Portsmouth, I would get the train, which I loved.

I was (and still am) very shy and naive. At the age of 17 I moved to Portsmouth. In a short period of time I got a job working for a very small company manufacturing trolley bags. With my previous history of loathing the car, it never occurred to me to explore bus routes for this 1.5 mile journey. Nor did it occur to me to travel by taxi. However, our little company operated at the back of a shop that was manufacturing chandlery equipment, who wanted their space back. We now had to move to a factory unit in Gosport Marina. This would involve the three of us travelling on the Gosport Ferry to get there.

We didn't even have a manager to watch us. He was still working for the other business in Old Portsmouth. We had a 19 year old supervisor who was as disinterested as I was. I'm not even sure if we had any orders coming in. We had no deadlines and hardly any stock. We just couldn't be bothered.

On the rare occasions we bothered to work, our equipment would fail us. Sometimes someone would pick us up and drive one of us to the Chandlers, so that our boss Alan could repair our equipment. On one occasion Alan's colleague drove me. I can't remember his name but he always seemed a happy soul. Always smiling and singing. I thought he was a bit odd, especially when he would start singing some rubbish about a "rubbery dinghy".

But he seemed likeable. He seemed popular. So popular that I assumed everyone knew him. I remember being driven by him in his car, weaving in and out of Portsmouth’s many tight back streets. He would frequently have a smile on his face and rotate his hand upwards while holding the steering wheel to acknowledge other drivers he'd let through.

Only, I didn't know that. I didn't understand that. I thought this man was Portsmouth's most famous and popular human being.

Sadly, it wasn't that he knew everyone. It was that I knew nothing.

#kiddiekorner