Italian friend called

This morning I had a phone call from my Italian friend asking if he could call to see me. I, of course told him he was welcome. He told me his wife would be with him. Unfortunately his wife suffers from problems relating to mental health. Well nerves really.
 They duy arrived and when I went out to meet them, they were looking at the car. She told him that he had caught my driveway gates. I looked and could plainly see that there was some damage done but I told them that with a bit of luck Tcut would get rid of the scratch. When they left I decided to measure the widthof the opening of the gates. Each gate was 69" wide making it 11.5ft wide. Plenty wide enough for his small Fiat Punto to get through.
 That got me thinking. When I was in the Army they taught me to drive. Mind you in a 5 ton vehicle which was bought down to 3 ton so that we could drive them at 18.
 When I left the Army, I was given a small document and was told that if I sent it off to the Department of Transport, I would for a sum of 5/- get a full driving licence. I didn't bother for about 3 years but then applied for my Licence. Yes it cost me 25p and it lasted for 3 years. It was automatically renewed for the same sum of 25p. I bought my first motor. A 100E side valve Ford Thames van. It had 3 forward gears ans a reverse. I can say with certainty that I was not capable of driving a van or car for that matter. I used to go into the country to practice and eventually improved. That was in 1960. In 1964 I gave the van to my then Brother-in- Law and bought a Ford Anglia. It was about 2 years old. Unfortunately when I went into business I had to sell my car. For about a year I had no transport at all. I then bought a second hand Bedford Van. I think it was about 4 years old. The good thing was that the mileometer did  not work it had registered mileage of 10900 so that when I traded it in for a New Vauxhall Van the Salesman said that the mileage was good so gave me a decent trade in price. This was in October 1974. I kept the Van until I managed to save a little more money. I decided to buy a Datsun120Y. Now called Nissan. It was an Estate. This was in December 1976. It must me remembered that there were no such things as rear wipers so you can imagine what the rear window was like in the autumn and winter wet days. I might just have well had kept  the Van.  I was so fed up that in September 1978 I swapped it for a Toyota Liftback. It really was a  lovely looking car but to be honest a rust bucket. I kept the car until 1984 when I gave it to my ex employee. He saw this Jaguar XJS Auto Sports. H.E. a V12. 5343cc. The most prestigous motor I have ever had. Anyay I kept it until 1988 when I bought a Citroen AX. GT. I sold the Jaguar private to a young man from Sheffield. He came to visit me much later and told me he was happy and that I had been honest with him.
 While I was in business at the Car Park I had a piece of equipment fall on the side of the car. As it was metallic paint it looked a mess so I decided to get a cheap Citroen and traded it in. I didn't care much for the cheap Citroen which incidentally was diesel so I decided to go for a better car.I think it was in 1998 I bought a Peugeot 206 Turbo Diesel. It was the cheapest car to run considering it was also a high performance car. I kept it for 4 years and sold it to my Sister and bought a Honda Civic. I only bought that car because my Mother was having difficulty getting in the car. This Civic had much more room. That was the only good thing about it. This would be in about 2002. When my Mother was  taken seriously ill and I knew that it was highly unlikely that she would ever return home. In the meantime I had an operation and finally decided in 2006 to get a different car. I went for a Hyundai Coupe. The trouble was that as the car was a coupe I had great difficulty in getting in and out of the car after my operation so in less than 2 years I decided to trade it in and buy another Peugeot. This time a 207 GT. I had leather seats and it was a nice car. Had it until February last year when I finally decide that spped was not my thing at my time of life so I went for my Vauxhall Corsa Ecoflex. It is a diesel and has  a zero Road Tax. It will do somewhere around 70mpg so it is economical fuel wise. More useless information soon.