A Swallow on the kitchen table

• 
• 
• 

As Summer ends and Autumn colours slowly enrich our countryside, Swallows start to gather for their annual migration to warmer countries, but not this one. A 1931 Wolseley Hornet Sports Swallow 2- seater. The egg-shell blue car stood out in the car park at Kop Hill Climb last weekend so I had to find the owner. I found Lorna busy investigating the operation of the butterfly in her carburetter after sensing slight loss of power on her run up the hill. She told me she had re-built the car herself - in her kitchen - after her father had threatened to sell it. "My dad had it in 1960 after previously owning a similar car to this. He sold it and wished he hadn’t, so he bought the bits, stripped it all down but then moved house and had three daughters. Thirty years later he phoned me up and said he was letting them go as spares. So I swore at him and said ‘I’ll do it dad’. He said I didn’t know anything about cars but I thought ‘how difficult can it be?’."

Two years later Lorna had her pride and joy on the road with a new MOT. During the rebuild she carefully scraped off layers of paint beneath the red, green and black and finally uncovered a beautiful pale blue and it was like 'Yes! I don’t have to have a maroon car anymore'! "To me it’s the right colour for a girl’s car and I just love driving it. I love dressing up and waving, I feel like a film star."

(Text and pictures Robin Batchelor)

Plaats een reactie, stel een vraag, geef uw mening, deel aanvullende informatie of start een discussie door de onderstaande velden in te vullen