Sometime in 1993, my beloved Morris Traveller was badly damaged and I took it to Charlie Ware’s Morris Minor Centre in Bath: I wandered into the workshop and thence into a rather untidy (and oily) office where I was welcomed and asked all about my car, how long I had owned it, my maintenance schedule etc, by a middle-aged man who was clearly enormously enthused by all things Minor-related.
Rather belatedly, I realised I had actually met Charlie himself, an almost legendary figure to those of us who tasked ourselves with keeping these venerable vehicles on the road. Picking it up some weeks later, he talked again about how I had managed to keep the paint inside the chassis-boxes immaculate while the outside was in a bit of a state. It was a delight to find such boyish enthusiasm in one who spent his life surrounded by elderly vehicles and encouraged me to keep my own vehicle on the road – which I did for another 15 years.
