Remember when new cars came with polythene covers on the seats?

A neighbour would buy a new car every couple of years and NEVER take the covers off, presumably to retain resale value. These were the days of beige velour, if you coughed up for a premium model. If not, you got vinyl. Fun on a hot day.

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My Dad actually bought some fitted plastic seat covers for this POS.

It made a repulsive wallowing vomit inducing Poxhall P.O.S. an epically horrid sweaty smelly POS…all the way from Glasgow to Lyme Regis over 3 bliddy days, two of which were likely spent just scaling Shap & Beattock. Complete with a spaniel panting cubic meters of dog halitosis.
How I wanted to throw that stinking hound off the Charmouth cliffs…
Thank you so much for enhancing my weekend with these deliciously fragrant memories.

Mind you, it was a marginal upgrade on this:
This…today…would trigger Social Services getting involved with the Child Abuse Unit.

It took around 4 days.
Well it would with ballistic 36 bhp.
It had covers too. But just on the back seat for us kids.
And that bloody spaniel.
My Dad could have been a tad Psycho.

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Only 4 days in a Beetle ? I once spent a very happy 3 weeks touring with 3 friends in an absolutely knackered Beetle Cabriolet from N Germany to Yorkshire via Chamonix, Aosta, Calais and Silverstone . And it was a bloody hoot .

Fragrant Memories… ???

Yep…I Bought Fitted Plastic Covers to Protect the Fitted Furry Covers I’d Got For My First Car the Mark 1 Escort. All the Rage…But Hot Hot Hot in Summer so Changed them for the…Wait For It…Beaded Seat Covers !

Yep…and My First Cocker was a Rescue with Severe Breath Issues due to Canker in his Ears & Mouth [Few Ops to Try & Correct & £££]

Yep…Nowadays What Our Parents Did Would Probably Count as Child Abuse but mostly Usual Practice in Them Days ?

But Hey Pal…Would You Rather Be You With Your Unique Personality & Character or Some [WARNING…CONTROVERSIAL…WARNING] :innocent: :smile: :heart: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :crazy_face: :smiling_face_with_tear: :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :grimacing: :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

A Cotton Wooled Snowflake [I Believe Is the Derrogatory Modern Term]

I Mean…We Wouldn’t Be MX5 Owners if We Couldn’t Cope With Bovver ???

Kindest

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Does bring back good vibes it does…The Iphone Millennials will just never know.
Mind you. happened by my 32 years old son’s house last week…he has a cottage out the way from the human race or whatever passes for it these days.
Now, I gave him a load of my CDs a while ago, and I could hear his cottage before I saw it.
Guess what? Out of huge studio Tannoy Monitors & weapons grade Nakamichi leccys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2KRpRMSu4g

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Yep…You’ve Cracked It :+1:

Scottish Fiver & Son Better than Scottish Fiver & Dad re Relationship :grinning:

[Managed to Have Brill Relationship With My Late Dad but Only After His Heart Attack Left Him a Bit Brain Damaged and He’d Forgotten a Lot of the Macho/Stiff Upper Lip etc Conditioning from Birth which he cascaded to his Daughters]

As Society Taught Him !

British Disease ?

Anyway…I’ve a Foot in Both Camps…Not Quite Touchy/Feely/Share Everything

But Perhaps Best Not to Bottle ?

Keep Well and Thanks Again For Your Posts…MX5 Related & Personal

Grasshopper Has Learned More Master :pray:

PS…Your Dad Probably Wasn’t a Psycho…Just Couldn’t Cope What Life Flung at Him?
:smiley:

Of course he was not.
He was a family GP!

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late GEN X born in 1976.
i guess that people of my age are among the last generation to have experienced the true great british self drive holiday of yesteryear!

i can remember dad loading up the ford escort estate car and driving us down to the norfolk coast.
i remember my uncle would drive down in the beige austin princess!
nan and grandad would drive down in his 3 wheeler!!!
my older brother and his mates would turn up sometime in the week on their motorbikes.
i remember that once we got there, my cousins, the dog and I would ride in the BOOT! and noone would bat an eyelid.
5 adults in the front and 3 kids and a dog in the boot! and we would go off to alk around cromer or go to brancaster stath and row the dingy across to seal island or bird island (i forget which was what)

and then dad and grandad would spend all afternoon cooking up a big pot of their army stew!
which was basically 1 tin corned beef 1 tin stewing steak 2 tins of soup 1 tin of peas and a tin of new potatoes!
and whole extended family would sit around the caravan and happily munch it all down with much bread and many cups of tea!

those were the days! when family and community really meant something!

i know that some familys still do the caravan holiday today but its not like it once was!
the 70s and 80s were a very special time, difficult times, which is probably why the good times where so great!

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I Was Born in 1958 but this Sparked Fond Memories of Family Holidays

And Yes…My Dad went Pematurely Bald so Wore a Knotted Hankey on His Head to Protect Against Sunburn

I Guess Health & Safety Has Had to Up It’s Game Due to Computers/Internet Speeding Up the Pace of Life and Resulting in Folk Getting Distracted as Some Much Stuff Gotta Be on Line These Days

my grandad used to wear the knotted hankerchief on the beach!! and a string vest!!!
70s style football shorts and sandels with leather straps and metal buckels

i remember having to help lug all the stuff from the car to the beach!
the old canvas wind break thing and ancient deck chairs made from a wooden frame and canvas.

my brother and i still have all the old family photo albums from those times
and when you sit and look through them it really feels like you are looking at almost a different world!

i guess the biggest loss from that time is the cohesion of the extended family and community!
these days a community is just a place wear people live and peacfully ignore each other!
and extended family is unheard of now!
back then
most familys would have several major family gatherings every year, weddings christenings and usually atleast 1 house party (usually around christmas) were the whole extended family would attend and this would be something like 30 to 50 people
we have yearly photos in the albums of these gatherings with everyone out in the garden standing together for a group photo!
but for some reason it all petered out through the 90s and now these types of gatherings are just a memory for most!
kids today have never experienced what it feels like to be in a rood or house with 30 to 50 other family members, over half of whom are direct blood relatives.

the trendy set today sneer at such things! and call us antiquated and stuck in the past!
in fact its very often the case where if you say that there was anything good in the past you will be called the N word or a white supremacist.
its very depressing

anyway i got off topic there but i needed to say it!

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That’ll include the thousands of Jet to Meds / £56.00 PCM Iphone / Credit Card maxing / Starbucks junkies knocking on the door of the Banks of Mum & Dads for their rooms back, a car deposit, or help to get their rent sorted, or worse still a deposit on their chicken coop £230,000 flat. :smiley:
When our lad joined up at aged 20, we sat him down and told him that was that. He always had his room to come home to and nice meals though between Afghan sorties etc …
Period. It worked…saved 50% of his wages for 12 years.
Bought his first car for cash 4 years back ( still has it) and piddling 48% mortgage on a really nice wee house.

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When I was a kid in the 60’s, my family never owned a new car, but I sometimes did see the occasional one still with it’s plastic seat covers. Must say, I thought it was a bit sad, even then.

I certainly recall the 3 day journeys to go on holiday from Stranraer, in Galloway, to Cornwall.
Pre-Motorways…, so Shap…, Beattock, and places like Kirkstone Pass featured prominently on the journey.

One of the places we camped at overnight was Bolton Le Sands, in Lancashire. The site was only a few hundred yards from the railway line going into Carnforth just up the road. We hardly got any sleep that night, due to the sound of steam locomotives. All night. This was the first few days of August 1968. I learned long afterwards that 4th August 1968 was the official last day of steam by British Railways. I believe that Carnforth was a gathering point for locomotives as they were withdrawn.

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Was With You Until the Last Paragraph…[Then I Lost the Link in Your Thinking ?]

Don’t Think You Went Off Topic

Polythene Covers on the Seats Takes Many Of Us Back

So What !!

We Appreciate the Past…BUT

If We Hadn’t Adapted to the Future

WE WOULDN’T TALKING VIA A COMPUTER EH ?

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

My father never owned any sort of motorised transport. Not even a bicycle.

He walked everywhere, or used a bus. So we did, too.

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even so, you must have experienced the great british coastal holiday at least once right?
presumably you went by rail?
or are you not old enough to have been around in the 50s 60s 70s or 80s ?

I was born mid 1950s. We had one family holiday in Gorleston in 1960 or '61; we went from the midlands by coach.
Other than that, we only ever took day trips out, again, normally by coach. We certainly weren’t the poorest of families in our neighbourhood, but then again there wasn’t any spare money to go around.

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