Carol’s Column

When spare parts hardly happen

DAISY arrived on the scene about the same time as my husband. Fifteen years ago to the day.

She's still going strong.

Stout and bulky, with a sturdy undercarriage and a chassis that had seen better days, she was without peer.

My husband picked her up in the country somewhere, which accounted for her rustic look and broad beam.

Even today, I remember the Saturday morning she arrived.

Balloon-like with my first yet-to-be-born son, I relaxed in the garden.

The sun shone that happy August day and I recollect I'd just shut my eyes when I heard the most fearful noise.

I almost jumped out of my skin.

I knew it had to be my mother-in-law, a recent driver of 50 years experience in her blue jalopy of the missing exhaust pipe and the dented front and back bumpers.

Minor battle scars for a driver who thought nothing of reversing full-speed down Corlett Drive against the oncoming rush-hour traffic.

Wrong.

It was Daisy who clattered up the drive. Bruised, big and ugly, she stood tank-like among the newly-budding daffodils and ranunculi.

Surely the war's over, I thought as I observed this vehicle full-frontal so to speak.

"This is your new car," said my husband, whacking the bonnet with pride and almost fracturing his knuckles.

"It's a Land-Rover."

I realised it wasn't a Rolls.

"She's an investment. Our holidays of the future. With a four-wheel-drive vehicle, South Africa belongs to us. And Mozambique, Rhodesia and Lesotho," said my man joyously.

You understand, this was many moons ago.

An unsightly bush green, we scraped her down, painted her sunshine-yellow and named her Daisy.

Filled with enthusiasm, and, of course, Barry, who had not yet made his appearance, I helped get her into road-worthy condition.

While other mothers knitted boots, I bled brakes.

In place of a lounge suite, we bought a prop shaft. Instead of a dining-room table, we acquired a reserve fuel tank. A high-lift jack took the place of a pram and when Barry was born, I received free-wheeling hubs as a present.

By the time the fourth Lazar arrived, several years later, Daisy was the most-travelled and best-dressed Land-Rover in town.

A long-wheel base, series 2A of 1952 vintage, she has enriched our lives.

We are the only family who have seen Southern Africa from under a Land-Rover.

While our friends lazed on the beach in Durban, we changed differentials in the desert.

In Mozambique the steering shaft sheared from its mounting. In Warmbaths, Hluhluwe and Savuti, the half-shaft snapped. At Zimbabwe ruins, the generator packed up and in Moremi, the prop shaft dislodged itself.

At Mapelane we buckled a wheel and at Chobe we lost the exhaust pipe.

In the Transkei I soldered the radiator while the rivers came down in flood and my spouse had pneumonia in the tent.

Who needed synchromesh between gears or electric windscreen wipers when the manual kind would do?

And yet, throughout the years, Daisy took us to wild and wonderful, unspoilt beaches, to game parks full of game and nothing else. Up silent mountains, through the great Namib and the magical Okavango swamps.

We sold her yesterday — to a man with not much money, a beard and dreams in his eyes.

We watched him drive her away for the last time. Then, as he reached the front gate, we heard a familiar thwack.

Daisy's final farewell — the left rear half-shaft had snapped and what could be nicer than the merry sound of a sheared half-shaft on a spring morning?

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