Total Panic

It was the early dark days of January 1976, Christmas and all the festivities were over and the cold light of dawn crept into my life, I was having major problems with my finances, my jaw was in constant pain and to top it all off, I decided I would leave my pregnant girlfriend, run off to London and hide.

The problems with money obviously did not phase me, I bought my first car on the 8th January, it was as old as I was, a 1957 Ford Popular, 100E and it cost me the grand total of forty five pounds, I was soon to find out that just insuring it for three months would be over half that amount.

In the meantime, the girlfriend was sending letters, forgiving me for walking out on her. I read my diary and in the week that followed, not only was my relationship in the dumpster but all sorts of things were going wrong with the "new" car, if I'd known the phrase "money pit" back then, I would have used it.

The month ended with a reconciliation, a major haircut for my girlfriend for her new faithful "image" and another major haircut to my bank account for the car that I had nicknamed "The Sluggard", I was spending a lot of time down at the scrapyard, grubbing round for solutions, which was a fitting testament to my young life.

I ended the month stating my beliefs that the car appeared to be quite reliable now, that my revised girlfriend was also quite reliable now and that it seemed that life was on the up and up, happy times ahead.