Beamish – 1975

By Alan Connon

On a beautiful summer afternoon one weekend I mentioned to my wife “There’s a meeting of vintage cars at Beamish Museum, would you like to go?” “Yes” she said, so off we went with some sandwiches and arrived safe and sound. After settling ourselves on the grass we made our way to where the vintage cars were lined up. My wife Mary said: “Wait until I’m ready”, which I did and I shut the doors of the car.

After seeing the cars and wandering around for a while we eventually came back to the car. It was a hot day so I opened the doors of the car to let some fresh air in. As I turned round to face Mary, to my surprise she said: “I’ve locked my handbag in the boot.” This sent a feeling of fear, for without the keys we would be stranded here. How were we to get the keys out of the boot? Surely there must be someone here with similar car with a key which would probably open the boot of my car. So I set about asking various people if they had a Ford Popular. After lots of unfavourable answers I finally came across a former owner who said: “Why not take the backrest out of the car?” I was surprised because I didn’t think it would be taken out. Well, I thought, this is what I’ll do. And it worked – eureka, the back seat headrest lifted out and I reached as far as i could and rescued the handbag with the keys in it.

What a relief, now we could relax and make our way home.