THE ASSOCIATION OF BRITISH DRIVERS
IN SCOTLAND
I wonder if I am the best person to represent the ABD, living in one of the bigger counties of this country which hasn't one set of installed traffic lights, one traffic warden (very helpful chap) in a village fifty miles south, and two hundred miles away from the nearest GATSO. But that's not all that driving is about.
There are still places where you can enjoy driving, as I do. Having started with a 1939 Morris 8 which had a blown cylinder head gasket and missing its sunshine roof, I wondered if I should part with the £5 being asked for it. I took the plunge and my motoring career began. I was in the Royal Air Force as a trainee navigator, so there was plenty of willing advice to be had in the Motor Club - me not knowing which end of a screwdriver you held - and, being a number of years ago, crashed aircraft were parked anywhere out of the way, so there was a plentiful source of easily manipulated sheet aluminium to fill the hole in the roof. That magnificent machine took me from the south coast of England to north Scotland and thousands of miles in between till it sadly demised under a fallen tree.
Great fun driving continued in the Far East, Jaguars for next to nothing, no oppressive legislation, MkV11 saloon doing 100mph along the beach at Kota Tinggi, XK120, 130, XK-tourer, and local engineers who could produce high quality miracles from next to nothing.
Then back to reality - marriage, kids, poverty - spent the next twenty five years developing and running a hotel from which I have recently retired. So one thinks, working about 18 hours / seven days and never having had time to do anything in the way of social contribution, is it time to be sociable?
So I ended up on the community council and on so many committees which I feel it would be a service to humanity if they were demolished - now someone asks me to be local rep for the ABD! Who's a glutton for punishment then?
I have to say that here where the law is not intrusive, there is still the possibility of driving for pleasure. I would hate to be back in the 70's when I commuted 55 miles from Wantage to London daily.
Personal obsessions: Government databases. Makes the Iron Curtain polizei look like rank amateurs (and I went into depressing East Berlin regularly in the days of the 'wall'). Our only saviour is their inability to make them work. The frightening thing however, is that, (if any of you have worked on databases), all you need is a common field (for our government your N.I. number) to link them all together, and there you have it, everything you do in your life is accessible.
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