Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In Rhoda’s 1962 Diary, my mother talks about the time I pretended to be sick, but she didn’t know; as well as Alistair’s youth club.

February 1

I can actually remember ‘pretending’ to be sick that day for some reason or another. I wasn’t a very good liar or actor obviously! But, despite my criticisms of my mother – she was sometimes a sympathetic woman and let me stay at home!

 February 2

This must have been at the time when the glorious Wolseley 12 finally ‘bit the dust’. It had gone to be repaired at a garage, but ‘mysteriously’ caught fire, which was a ‘boon’, as it was probably insured, and the engine repairs would probably have been very expensive.

My father must have had the car from about 1953 to 1962, which was pretty good going, I think it was a 1949 model, although the design was pre-war, and first introduced in 1939. If I were to make a cynical assumption, the ‘new’ Humber Hawk was probably bought for the £100 my father perhaps received from the insurance company! Even as a child, I could sense there were some ‘shenanigans’ going on at the time, involving my father, Uncle Gavin, and the garage owner!

The Wolseley 12 – a symbol of a time past?

Absurdly, I consider the Wolseley 12 to be a symbol of our family life’s ‘heyday’, or traditional British values. In other words, the Wolseley 12 was ‘the last of a breed’, just as my parents and family were.

My mother’s comment above saying “Cars are just a curse one way and another,” probably refers to extra incurred costs and unreliability. 

As mentioned, my father bought a 1956 Humber Hawk (picture below), a very dignified and large car without the ‘sporty’ attraction of other models, such as the Riley Pathfinder and Jaguar saloons. 

Alistair’s Youth Club

My mother also writes about Stuart and his youth club, but the writing is unclear. My mother gave Stuart money for the youth club. Youth clubs were ‘big’ in the 1950s and 1960s. The post-war period saw the birth of ‘the teenager’. My three elder brothers were among the ‘first teenagers’. They celebrated by buying records of Elvis and Adam Faith, wearing jeans, and attending youth clubs. 

Alistair later became an expert billiards and snooker player. He won the Gold Cup for snooker at the Billericay Constitutional Club in the 1960s. He beat Vernon Philips in the final. Vernon was a prominent figure in Billericay society. He was a professional, perhaps a lawyer or real estate agent. He was a tall, robust, good-humoured, virile man in his early sixties with balding, long silver hair. Vernon was also somewhat rotund and always wore ‘Billy-Bunter-like’ trousers.Of course, Vernon wasn’t as fat as Billy Bunter.

At least, we were very impressed by Vernon, as he always drove to the club in his Mk X Jaguar.  Of course, it was absurd that we admired his ‘jelly-mould’ Mk X Jaguar. We drove around in older Mk VII and VIII Jaguars and felt somewhat ‘inferior’. But it is clear today that the Mk VII, VIII, and IX Jaguars were far superior to the Mk X. Of course, this is ‘hindsight knowledge’. The Mk VII was one of the last glorious classic cars based on pre-war and post-war technology. 

In one sense, you might even say it was related to the great American marques – and not surprisingly, it was sold on the American market. The British economy was struggling during the post-war period; the government had issued the dictum, ‘Export or Die’.