28/04/2020
Man of many talents Jo Burt sent this a few days ago and it brought a happy tear to my eye.
My first ‘company’ car when I was a 20 year old living in snowy Meribel with Heidi was a brown Panda 4x4. It would only bump start which is a sobering experience when you have to roll down an Icy mountain road in the pitch black to try and get It going at 6.30am. You had to wait for it to fire up to then turn the lights on and get the wipers going to clear the snow before you hit the first left hand bend. Then one of us had to rev the nuts out of it to keep it running whilst the other popped into the bakers to get the baguettes. The amount of times it still conked out and we ended up walking to work as Chalet hosts was far to many for the £50 per week we got. Our boss (T Shirt Phil / dodgy Phil ) had another Panda 4x4 that we drove up the ski run to Mottaret and back one night. We had all the doors open ready to bail out as it picked up some toboggan style speed coming back down but we made it. Super Panda. A few years later Bruno a friend and Bar owner in Ardent, Morzine used to tell us stories of how he would drive his Panda across a frozen lake Montriond on the way back home for fun. Then Jo and I met in Tuscany and we quickly gained a shared descriptive knowledge of the local roads based where we knew Fiat Pandas were parked or we had seen one before. We don’t just know cool places to get an Espresso, we also know where to spot a glimpse of a rare or heavily dented Panda. Side streets, half open garage doors, Wineries and Tobacconist car parks. We could draw maps of Tuscan cycling routes based around seeing classic Fiats but they would be like sharing secret military plans. I finally bought this red one a couple of years ago but sadly had too sell it on a few weeks ago. It’s a shame Jo and I didn’t get to do any of those Thelma and Louise style sunset chasing road trips in the Panda but it was a fun dream. (We probably wouldn’t have got past Bognor) 🌅 .
Thank you Jo (I think I want another one now)
@ Haywards Heath
