Ah, Box Hill!...... As soon as I got my first car, a green 1957 Austin A35 in 1967, I took my then girlfriend up Box hill for an afternoon canoodle.
On the way back down, trying to impress her, I took one the tight corners too fast and went off the road and rolled over down the side of the hill. After a couple of revolutions a very small tree stopped us from rolling any further, coming to rest on the passenger side of the car. Lucky or what?
A chap in a motor caravan saw what had happened and came down to help us to get out of the drivers door. My girlfriend had put her arms up to protect her face and had gashed the top of her right wrist on the driving mirror, which in the A35 was just a sheet of glass without any frame or surround.
Somehow we ended up in an ambulance on the way to Dorking (I assume) Hospital.They laid my girlfriend down on a bed in a cubicle to examine her with me present, sitting on a chair at the end of the bed, where I was able to appreciate her lovely legs!
(I still miss stockings and suspenders to this day!). They dressed her wrist and discharged us. We had to phone her parents, from a phone box of course, and her mum came to pick us up. We told her mum and dad that we had hit a rock which had rolled onto the road, leaving the car unsafe to drive, which they seemed to accept! ..........
The next day, a colleague in her father's office remarked that he was in his motor caravan, following a Green A35 coming down the Box Hill Road when it took a bend too fast, went off the road and rolled down the hill coming to rest on it's side.
What are the odds of THAT happening?? Come on!!
To be honest, I don't know how we got out of that one. Probably something like "We didn't want to worry you!" But my girlfriend had smoothed things over, by the time I went over to see her in the evening. Her mother was always lovely to me, but her father thought I wasn't good enough for her!
The A35 was recovered, repaired and used again, suffering two more accidents, (again with said girlfriend in the car) which were NOT my fault, before being replaced by an Anchor Blue Mk.1 Ford Escort 1100. Talk about chalk and cheese! It was a lovely car!
The girlfriend?.....We are still together, married, 53 years after that fateful day, and she is the love of my life. The scar on her wrist hasn't completely disappeared, and she still has lovely legs!
I vowed I would never own a green car again, and not wear anything green when driving. (The green stripe windscreen on Z3lda doesn't count!)
I have never been back to Box Hill since that day!
Bonzo.
