Sundays in a smoke filled car

The sunday run

Dad worked as a furniture mover, or as Denis and I would say, “a flitting remover”, after all where we came from moving house was called flitting, and many a debt laden family carried out the famous ‘moonlight flit’, moving to the other side of Burnley where it would seem they could never be found. Such was the vastness of Burnley at the time, all six miles across and as many wide. But when you have lived your entire life in one street, or in a radius of several streets, a mile is a long way. The firm he worked for, was owned by the dad of a school pal of ours, Tony, the last I heard of Tony he was apparently residing in one of her majesties 'hotels' for removing something without permission.



the Bedford furniture van, change the name
of the owner and this could be the one!



Dad's job entailed lifting furniture all day, going to a house, loading up the furniture and moving it to another, most days there would be two moves a day, but after all we are only talking for the most part a house comprised of four rooms of furniture, two of them being bedrooms with only a bed, dresser and wardrobe, so moving two houses a day was normal. He worked five and a half days a week, the normal work week at that time in our area, most people worked five full days and a half day on Saturday, that’s just how it was.

Our life was a simple one, much like anyone else had, work during the week, football on Saturday afternoon, stay in Saturday night and go for a ‘Sunday run’ after dinner. Dad was not a sports fan, I never saw him go to any sporting event, to be very truthful I have no idea what he was interested in, go to work, smoke and sleep was about all I ever saw him do.

The Sunday afternoon run in the car was just as much a ritual as the Sunday dinner was, timing again was everything. If you think that people’s lives today are governed by the clock, you should have lived in Burnley in the sixties. Eating ‘out’ was a dirty phrase, “why should we eat out when we have perfectly good food at home” was echoed in many Burnley houses when a day trip was suggested. One would have thought that Sunday mornings should be reserved for worship at the church of ones choice, and for some it was, for most it was hangover recovery time, and for us it was Sunday dinner preparation time. Following dinner we invariably went on a Sunday run in the car. For Denis and I it was the only time during the week that we went in the car, we either walked to school, or went there on the bus, and once dad got home from work at around six o clock, the car was locked up in a rented garage for the night. The performance of getting ‘the car out again’ was not worth the effort of even asking, dad had rituals, putting the car away was done at a certain time for certain length of time, any deviation was subject to inquisition, it must have been easier to climb mount Kilimanjaro in football boots than opening a garage door!

But on Sunday afternoon the car would be in the back street, waiting for the off. For a man who spent his life driving, he had no idea how a car worked, nor would he even listen to any advice on the subject. One car we had years later, an Austin maxi had a radio, do you think we could have it on. Not on your life, “it’ll flatten bloody battery” was the reason, and if he spotted a car driving with the headlights on, he would gesticulate and point until the owner of the car thought he had a dog wrapped around his front bumper. When Volvo's started coming to England in the late sixties he was beside himself, these cars were made to have running lights, "must go through a lot of bloody batteries!"



John and Yoko owned an Austin, wonder if they
had their radio on?

Many years later I tried explaining to him that the battery only starts the car, after that the alternator generates electricity for running it, after an hour of solid arguing I gave up, as I often did. (Don't let me get into the squad numbering system for football argument, "number one is the goalie, number two is the right back, number three is the left back", "no dad, their all part of a squad, any number can play anywhere", "no! number one is the goalie, number two is the right back, number three is the left back", and so it went on, perfectly repeated until I gave up, and he said "see, told  I you I was right")

Anyway I digress, we would get into the car after lunch and drive, dad was a careful driver, never exceeding thirty miles an hour (even on the new motorways) and driving much slower if he felt like it as he often did. The line ups behind us were sometimes many miles long, but dad was driving as if he was in the furniture van, middle of the road, wide corners and slowly. 'they can overtake me if they want to, I'm not stopping them!"   can we listen to the radio dad? "no, it'll flatten battery". Dad would smoke steadily, cigarette after cigarette with the windows wound up to avoid drafts, we would be riding in a smoke filled chamber of blue haze. I struggled as a kid to keep up with my classmates during cross country running, I now realise that I was the heaviest smoker in the class, besides Denis!



the road into Staining is very nice, you have no idea
how long driving along this stretch can take



Most times we would visit family, arriving unannounced as was the custom, just turning up on someone's door in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, seemed normal then but not something I would ever do now. Dad came from a small town outside Blackpool called Staining, and we often went there to visit uncle Bill and auntie Mary, I found out much later that uncle Bill, Bill Elliot, actually played goalie for Blackpool after the war. We would turn up, Denis and I would play in their garden, which was great for us, adult discussions would take place and an hour later we were heading home again. I doubt if anyone could find a longer way to drive from Burnley to Blackpool as dad, it was very picturesque, but long, we were "avoiding the traffic" as he would say, we were avoiding every living being for miles around were my thoughts. It would take us an hour and a half just to get to Staining, later on I could drive it easily in forty five minutes, unless I was stuck behind a driver doing thirty miles an hour! we would get back home, dad would 'put the car away', and tea would be served on the dot at five o clock, the weekly Sunday run was over for another week, and school was in the morning again for the Kirkham twins.