It's that car again . . .

. . . and the same lady - and that was a younger me in the driving seat of my little Austin Seven . . . but what was that flying lady doing in my picture?

I am again looking back to the early 1950s when the UK car industry was just recovering from the war years during which production had been turned over to military needs, and there were still many 20-year-old cars on the road, but I can see one post-war car in this picture - another Austin, I believe.  It all seems like only yesterday, but much has happened in the 60+ years since the picture was taken by a press photographer friend who gave me the undeveloped negative because his newspaper did not allow members of staff to use the company's darkroom for private snaps, while the press agency where I was working was quite comfortable with that if the pictures were offered to them for potential sale as stock images - and a shot of a young couple in an open-top car was deemed to meet that criterion.

I don't know if the picture was ever resold or published  after I left the agency.  I was never asked to sign a model release or licence to publish, and I took the negative with me when I moved to a new job, leaving  open the question of copyright, which is judged not on who holds the original, but ownership of intellectual rights - in other words, who thought of the idea, which also applies to music, writing and all areas of creative work - so I hope my cyber-friends will enjoy this private snapshot until somebody decides to prosecute (or persecute?) me for sharing it publicly without a clear copyright tag!

The picture was taken in Augusta Street, Derby, near the old Baseball Ground - but that's an American game isn't it?  And our national games are football (soccer) and cricket, which was played at the Racecourse!  - but the history is somewhat convoluted (I've waited years for an opportunity to use that word!) so I'll save that for another day.

But (he says, daring to start a sentence with a conjunction!) I can reveal right now that I was parked outside the house where I rented a room while waiting to find a place of my own, and the lady was my landlady's daughter. This could well be heading for some lurid pulp fiction, couldn't it?  But, (he says again!) that would be quite another story.

Oh, and the flying lady?  She is The Spirit of Ecstasy, the mascot of Rolls-Royce cars, whose service mechanics I have to thank for rescuing me late one night when my little car broke a half-shaft, and in the true spirit of the famed car makers whose vehicles 'never break down' found me a replacement part next day in a junk yard and by way of payment requested "a couple of quid, to buy t'lads a pint"  ... But that story must also wait for another day, because this one has gone on far too long!

Thank you for reading this -- if you survived to the end!