The car returned, looking refreshed, and so our journeys continued. All of my young coming-of-age experiences looped around the car. I developed a deepening love for it, and pride in it. My anxious school mornings, being sick – literally – with school anxiety in it. The car was, despite the refresh, still widely considered a banger back then. And therein, for me, lay one of the strongest threads of my attachment to it. I was on the more reserved end of the spectrum, probably seeming vulnerable in many ways, and not willing to just “fit in” in the interest of self-preservation. Yet Mog gave me a way out. Cocooned in hard metal, I was wearing a shield. Crucially, the shield itself was vulnerable; always the butt of jokes, mocked, put-upon, looked down upon - but it kept on going. I could wear this shield, without betraying my vulnerability. The attachment was set in stone – or metal. So many experiences followed; changing the engine at the side of the road, my father out in all weathers at all times of the year skinning his knuckles underneath the car, family holidays, learning to drive aged 7 in the Scottish Gas depot carpark at the weekend, my sister learning to drive, it being the first car my brother ever started (in gear at the time, too). Going missing as a toddler but just having found the keys to the car and making my way out to it (repeatedly). Everything, it seemed. It was always only just surviving. It was, however, also always fixable, at least in theory. This was another key element of the attachment – with all the events in life, the challenges and losses in families, the car always offered some tangible hope that this part of the family could always be fixed and brought back from the brink.
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Then, when I was about 12 years old, it became too much. We tried to find ways around it, my parents bought me a MIG and I was able to enroll on a welding course – on condition of the college that my father also signed up and I accompanied him. Still, we weren’t able to keep Mog going. We tried any avenue of help we could think of including, on my paper round, my dad and I posting a note with the paper asking if anyone could spare space on their drive or in a garage. This was all just after my sister had chipped in with her savings to buy new trunnions. We were able to get a MK2 Clio through the Mobility scheme, and Mog ended up on a neighbour’s drive for a number of years, then a parking space in the borders at my sister’s rented house. From there it ended up in a field off the A7 where some passer buy stole the new trunnions (a wing was falling off, so they could easily see the new parts). After the trunnions were stolen, the car more or less sat on the ground and the field started growing through it. Throughout the mid-to-late ‘90s I daydreammed obsessively about the future plans for the car. I was sure it would be my wedding car (now, perhaps, my retirement car). I saved every picture I could and read every word from the JLH project Moose and the Beardmore brother’s site – making notes and scrapbook images of the little details that I thought one day would be part of Mog (the bespoke speaker pods, support arm on the glove box lid, Peugot wheels, and the K-Series engine being highlights).
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After 7 or so years, my father and I realised a life-long dream; he was able to oragnise the building of a garage at home and Mog was then duly pulled from the field (against his better judgement!) and into the garage. Very rotten, but home and dry at last.
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Shortly after building the garage, my father died. I had, in the intervening couple of years, managed to – almost literally – throw some metal at the car. I didn’t have the time, skills, equipment, or money, to do it right, but all I wanted to achieve at the time was to try to preserve some of the key measurements e.g. between the sills and the prop tunnel. After some time, I started to feel guilty that my attachment to the car had caused so much hassle for others. I was worried about my mother, and the fact that I had left the shell of a car hanging in the garage; something which wasn’t going to be easy to move without considerable difficulty and, likely, expense. Then, one day, I happened upon a “Wanted” post on Freecycle where someone was looking for a Land Rover to work on as a project with his son. I got in touch, and explained that although I didn’t have a Land Rover, I did have a Morris Minor. The man replied, excited about the car, and I thought “Wow, I’ve done it – I've managed to do the big grown-up thing and let go, and this is the perfect way to do it”. The man was an engineer, and had the skills and the time required. The car went to him, along with 30-odd years’ worth of accumulated spares. Sadly, personal circumstances meant that he had to abandon projects, and Mog returned to life in a field. After another 6 or so years, I was offered Mog back, and here we are. There were many more twists and turns along the way, other Morris Minors, adventures, losses, and hope.
