I used to be acquainted with an eccentric wing-nut who used a 2CV as his daily driver in Newfoundland.  Funny enough the thing (no, not VW)  wasn't half bad in the snow, although heat and snow coming in from the "roof" was a bitch.  Paint this one yellow and pretend you are James Bond in "For your eyes Only".

I guess its conceivable that it could be a chick magnet just on the sheer odness and uniqueness of the thing, almost like John Cleese. This model in our Halifax Used Car Showroom has 75,000km on its rebuilt (2003) engine, standard and optional moonscape roof.

The Following is from wiki pedia

The Citroën 2CV (French: deux chevaux vapeur, literally "two steam horses", from the tax horsepower rating) was an economy car produced by the French automaker Citroën from 1949 to 1990. ^[2] It is considered one of their most iconic cars. It was described in the book Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car by longtime CAR magazine columnist the late LJK Setright as "the most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car." It was designed for low cost, simplicity, versatility, reliability, and off-road driving. For this it had a light, easily serviceable engine, extremely soft long travel suspension (with adjustable ride height), high clearance, and for oversized loads a car-wide canvas sunroof (which until 1960 also covered the boot). Between 1948 and 1990 3,872,583 2CVs were produced, plus 1,246,306 camionettes (small 2CV trucks), as well as spawning mechanically identical vehicles like the Ami, Dyane, Acadiane, and Mehari.

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Apresentando um conceito inovador e destinado a assumir um papel de destaque no segmento de monovolumes do segmento B2, o C3 Picasso será lançado no Salão do Automóvel de Paris.
Com estilo audacioso e uma engenhosidade surpreendente a altura de seus assentos e a visibilidade a bordo agradarão a todos os passageiros, enquanto sua modularidade completa e intuitiva facilitará a vida cotidiana.

O C3 Picasso une os antagonismos dos redondos e quadrados, do retrô e moderno, para oferecer um veículo com um design inovador, com personalidade e ao mesmo tempo marcante e impertinente. Sua silhueta colocar seu desempenho a serviço do bem-estar dos usuários, para os acompanhar em todas as situações da vida. 

Com um comprimento de 4,08 m, uma largura de 1,73 m e uma altura de 1,62 m, ele apresenta uma parte dianteira surpreendentemente compacta e um desenho traseiro totalmente vertical. Associada a um assoalho de porta-malas móvel, permite liberar uma área de carregamento perfeitamente plana até a parte traseira da fileira 1.
Envidraçado, o espaço interno é iluminado pela luz do sol. Entre as mais extensas do segmento, a superfície envidraçada total pode chegar a 4,52 m² com o teto panorâmico.

A estabilidade de sua carroceria, muito próxima a de um sedan proporciona uma viagem tranqüila e segura.
Projetado para todo tipo de terreno, o C3 Picasso é equipado por uma gama de motores potentes e eficazes. O modelo receberá dois motores a gasolina de nova geração, o VTi 95 e o VTi 120, e duas motorizações a diesel o HDi 90 e  o HDi 110 FAP. Os motores HDI possuem a assinatura Airdream®, destinada aos veículos da gama Citroën que se destacam no respeito ao meio ambiente.  

A nova silhueta da família C3 será apresentada no próximo Salão Mundial do Automóvel de Paris, antes do início de sua comercialização na Europa, no primeiro trimestre de 2009.

El fabricante galo ha creado una exposición en la Ciudad de las Ciencias y de la Industria de París para conmemorar el aniversario de este popular modelo.

Uno de los modelos más emblemáticos de la industria automotriz mundial, conmemora 60 años de vida. Nos referimos al Citroën 2CV, un coche que nació a mediados de los años 30s para satisfacer la demanda de un coche popular y de bajo costo. Para celebrar este acontecimiento, el fabricante francés ha realizado una muestra de este modelo que tiene lugar en la Ciudad de las Ciencias y de la Industria de París, que recoge toda la historia de este clásico, y la cual estará abierta al público hasta el 30 de noviembre de este año.

En la segunda mitad de los años 30, Citroën decidió fabricar un utilitario para completar su ya exitosa gama -gracias al Traction-. Ese fue el 2CV, que este año celebra su 60 aniversario con una exposición en la Ciudad de las Ciencias y de la Industria de París, abierta al público hasta el 30 de noviembre.

El principal impulsor del proyecto TPV (Très Petite Voiture), del que nacería el 2CV, fue Pierre-Jules Boulanger, entonces director de Citroën. En él estaban también André Lefèbvre, responsable del Traction y, posteriormente, del DS, y el diseñador Flaminio Bertoni, creador de esos tres modelos.

El objetivo era conseguir un coche robusto, capaz de transitar por terrenos variados, barato de producir y económico de mantener. Los primeros prototipos, ya con la forma que tendría el 2CV, eran una obra maestra de ingeniería y una máquina muy avanzada a su tiempo. Tenían tracción delantera, caja de cambios de cuatro velocidades y suspensión independiente en las cuatro ruedas.

Polivalente
Ninguno de los otros coches populares del momento, en producción o en fase de prototipo, llegaba tan lejos. Algunos testimonios indican que los prototipos fueron escondidos o destruidos tras la ocupación alemana, para evitar que el TPV –como tecnología punta que era- cayera en manos enemigas y fuera usado con fines militares.

Con la liberación de Francia, Citroën retomó el proyecto. No hubo grandes cambios mecánicos, salvo que se reemplazó el motor bicilíndrico refrigerado por agua de los prototipos por uno más sencillo refrigerado por aire, de 375 cm3. También se reemplazaron parte de los paneles originales de aluminio por componentes de chapa de acero.

Citroën mostró la versión definitiva -2CV A- en el Salón de París de 1948. La prensa lo recibió con críticas a su aspecto y algunos comentarios hechos con sorna. En julio de 1949 comenzó la producción y los clientes dejaron en muy mal lugar a los críticos: tras los primeros meses en el mercado, el plazo de espera llegó a tres años. El público supo ver inmediatamente lo que éstos no apreciaron: el 2CV era el coche idóneo para necesidades muy distintas. Se desenvolvía muy bien en ciudad, circulaba con soltura por caminos sin asfaltar, era espacioso para su tamaño, tenía cuatro puertas y resultaba mucho más económico de utilizar y mantener que otros modelos de precio semejante.

A diferencia de prácticamente todos los modelos diseñados en los años 30 y que estaban en producción en los 50, el 2CV seguía siendo entonces un modelo muy avanzado técnicamente. El 2CV era un coche sencillo, pero en absoluto tosco.

Tan bien planteado y construido estuvo desde el principio, que en su evolución no hubo cambios importantes. El motor ganó cilindrada y potencia, aunque se mantuvo siempre con un consumo muy bajo. Los frenos de disco en las ruedas delanteras no fueron necesarios hasta los años 80, debido a lo ligero que ha sido siempre el 2CV.

De moda
Los cambios más notables en la carrocería fueron el sentido de apertura de las puertas en 1964 o la tercera ventanilla lateral de algunas versiones. Por lo demás, sólo añadiduras de equipamiento (que habrían pasado por lujos inicialmente) y cambios cosméticos en los faros, los paragolpes o la parrilla.

Con el tiempo, el 2CV ganó algo que no estaba previsto en el pliego de condiciones: encanto. El 2CV comenzó a captar a personas que no necesitaban un coche tan económico, pero se sentían atraídas por él. En los primeros años sólo se fabricaba en color gris, después hubo una paleta extensa de colores, algunos muy vivos. Las distintas series especiales, como el Sport, el Charleston o el Cocorico, le dieron un toque más de estilo.

Tampoco estaba previsto en un principio que el 2CV fuera un coche de competición. Pero, cuando un automóvil tiene el grado de aceptación social que ha tenido el 2 CV, es cuestión de tiempo que se utilice de todas las formas posibles, incluidas las carreras.

El 2CV fue inicialmente un coche de grandes raids, como el París-Kabul-París de 1970 o el Raid África de 1973 (8.000 km a través del Sahara). Un año antes se presenta en Francia el campeonato 2CV Cross. En España, se podía ver al 2CV -junto con el Mehari y el Dyane 6- en las delirantes carreras de Pop Cross, competición automovilística con estética psicodélica.

El viernes 27 de julio de 1990, a la 16:00 horas, salió de la fábrica de Mangualde (Portugal) el último de los 2CV. Después de 42 años, Citroën había producido 5.115.268 unidades, entre turismos y furgonetas. Como conductores o pasajeros, millones de personas han disfrutado de un 2CV, siempre con un consumo mínimo de recursos en su producción y durante su uso. Se podría decir que, si algo así consta en la hoja de servicios de un automóvil, es porque está entre los mejores de la historia.

CRONOLOGÍA
1948: El jueves 7 de octubre se presenta el 2CV en el 35º Salón de París.

1949: En julio comienza la producción de la versión 2CV A en la fábrica de Levallois. Tiene un motor bicilíndrico de 375 cm3 y 8 CV; todas las unidades están pintadas de gris.

1951: Comienza la producción de una furgoneta derivada del 2 CV, llamada AU.

1952: Se reemplaza el color de la pintura por otro tipo de gris. Un año después desaparece el óvalo que enmarca el escudo de Citroën.

1954: Un nuevo motor de 425 cm3 y 12 CV para las dos versiones, la berlina AZ y la furgoneta AZU. Está unido a la caja de cambios a través de un embrague centrífugo.

1956: Aparece la versión AZL (de "lujo"), con un sistema de desempañado en el parabrisas, capota de color y luneta trasera. Dos años después hay una versión con otro sistema de acceso al maletero llamada AZLP

1958: Versión 4x4 Sahara, con un motor en la parte delantera y otro en la trasera.

1959: Un nuevo color para la carrocería: azul. Un año después cambia la parrilla por una más pequeña, que permanecerá sin grandes cambios hasta el final de la producción.

1963: Nuevo motor, con 425 cm3 y 18 CV. La versión AZAM tiene un acabado más vistoso.

1964: La puertas delanteras se abren en el sentido normal. Un año después, Citroën incorpora un tercer cristal lateral.

1970: Aparecen el 2 CV 4 (435 cm3) y el 2 CV 6 (602 cm3). Raid París-Kabul-París, de 16.500 km. Un año después, Raid de ida y vuelta desde París a Persépolis (13.500 km) y, en 1973, el Raid África desde Abidjan hasta Túnez a través del Sahara (8.000 km).

1974: Aparecen los faros rectangulares, una parrilla de plástico reemplaza a la de aluminio. Los faros redondos volverían en versiones como el 2 CV Special de 1975.

When Citroen launched the 2CV (known as Citroën "Baby-brousse" in most of West Africa) at the Paris auto show in 1948, it was laughed at by journalists for being too Spartan. Nevertheless the rest of the French population fell in love with the styling, afford ability, and ruggedness. It was the car that put France on wheels. It would go on to become one of the greatest small cars ever built with passionate fans all over the world. The car used innovative features like an H-frame chassis like airplanes of the time, front wheel drive, fully independent suspension, lightweight air-cooled flat twin engine.

The car used a simplistic approach, adopting many mechanical and few electrical parts. Even the side windows would flip-up rather than wind down; a very cheap, yet effective feature. The roll-up fabric roof allowed for quicker roof assembly and provided open air motoring. The air-cooled engine had no distributor and required no radiator and the accompanied complex piping. This made for a very reliable engine not even the VW beetle could match.

Today this car gets praise, but it is good to know that it med some hurdles during its development most notably word war 2. Prototypes were ordered to be destroyed for fear of German acquisition of the technology, but some well deserving engineers, buried some of the prototypes, preserving what would become the iconic 2CV. Development started in the mid 1930’s, but it was not until after the war in 1948 that the world first gazed eyes upon the car.

Of all the cars in my inspiration series, the 2cv is the one I admire the most; mainly because it was not just cheap, but technically innovative. No other car in history has inspired countless engineers working on affordable mobility more than the 2CV. Its final success as well as the struggles in early development harbors some vital lessons for any car envisioned for a developing country.

Tonami Playman is a computer science student at Knoxville college. He is an avid information consumer and contributer in computer and automotive circles.

Lanciata nel 1948, in occasione del Salone di Parigi, la Citroen 2Cv, diede inizio all’era delle auto a basso costo. Coniugando il lusso di una decappottabile, a un prezzo assolutamente modico, con consumi limitati (4-5 litri ogni 100 km), la DueCavalli, è divenuta un mezzo per tutti, simbolo di un’epoca che ha segnato l’emancipazione femminile e la rivoluzione degli hippy.

In 42 anni, sono stati prodotti ben 5milioni di Citroen 2Cv, adesso, i modelli più emblematici saranno esposti ancora una volta al Salone di Parigi, in un allestimento spettacolare: auto sospese al soffitto del museo, sfilate, una collezione di modellini in miniatura, filmati d’archivio, documentari, spot pubblicitari dell’epoca e testimonianze di ingegneri e designer…

Per maggiori informazioni http://www.cite-sciences.fr/

Rather than a race, it is a test of endurance and team spirit laced with social responsibility, whereby each team sponsors and contributes to a local project, such as constructing wells or establishing cyber cafes with the charity Close the Gap.

My parents drove the truck with supplies, spare fuel and water. In addition to towing and repairing the 2CVs, they also helped the kitchen team set up camp.

As this trip has been their dream for years, my mother decided to turn her diary into a blog (in Dutch), which reads like a journal now that the voyage is over. Even if you don't speak Dutch, it's worth taking a look just for the pictures.

http://touaregtrail.wordpress.com

It also meant that I didn’t have to dust off my trumpet for the reveille this morning and hoik them all out of bed so that one of them could go to school with the rest of them trailing behind announcing how ill they are in world weary tones and leaning into the hedgerows because they’re too weak to stand up.  Even though the school is less than five minutes walk from our front door, on days like that it seems as if we’re going on a polar expedition with only some Kendall Mint Cake and a pair of socks between us.  Oscar did wake us up at 8.30 with a full fanfare and the gobbledegook equivalent of the words: ‘Party on Wayne and Garth’, but as this was a positive lie in for us, it didn’t matter too much. 

I notice that Kendall Mint Cake seems to have fallen out of vogue with explorers recently.  On QI last week they had a question about an expedition to some ridiculously inaccessible place in Peru where there was only a statue of Lenin and several thousand penguins.  Some blokes had gone there using kite skis and one of them was in the audience.  When asked what they ate he said chocolate, with nary a mention of the mint cake.  Now, as you know, I'm a huge fan of chocolate, but surely something is wrong with the state of exploration today if you can’t travel four billion miles using a wooden spoon and a raft and surviving only on some minty sugar? I might write to the National Geographic (worried of Glenfield).  Standards are declining everywhere. 

I am now concerned about the good people of Kendall.  What are they to do if the mint cake market is in decline?  For years the production of said cakes has kept generations of families in work, slaving away in the mint mines, hacking out lumps for their women folk to package up and sell to Sir Edmund Hillary, Sherpa Tensing and their crack pot descendants.  It’s a pretty specialist skill set, and it’s not like you can segue smoothly from that to say, knitting bobble hats or weaving rope ladders.   

They will either have to go into a steep decline and take their place shoulder to shoulder with the great unwashed, or turn the entire of Kendall into a retro explorers theme park (Explorama), in which you and your family can kit up like mountain climbers and ascend a recreation of K2 made out of loose Kendall Mint Cake chippings whilst chewing away on a few bars.  They could also make quite a bit from dentistry I imagine, as the stuff is more corrosive for your teeth than dipping them in sulphuric acid for a few hours.  It’s a little known fact that all explorers from 1800 onwards had splendid pairs of false teeth made from finest ivory, so they could chomp their mint cake without having to worry about finding a dentist at 30,000 feet. 

Perhaps that's why they don't use Kendall Mint Cake any more.  After all, since the ban on ivory and ivory related products, it might be hard to find a good substitute for the false teeth that would weather the stresses and strains the life of an explorer would put on a pair of gnashers.  That's probably it.

I’m fascinated by what drives these explorer chaps to do such things.  Why, why, why travel using a kite ski for goodness sake?  I didn’t even know there were such things, let alone think about travelling to South America on one.  It could be the adrenaline rush they’re after, but if they want that they should come and look after three children under the age of nine for a week with all their attendant ills and dramas.  They’ll never complain of boredom again. 

I crave boredom like a monkey craves a bunch of bananas.  It’s top of my Christmas list this year along with some more fluffy socks (I’m slightly obsessed by fluffy socks at the moment) and a panettone! 

Perhaps I could go to school every day using a different exploring technique?  On Mondays we could go cross country, pushing our way through people’s bushes and leaping across their zinnias, commando stylie.  We would need some kind of anti-canine device, possibly water pistols filled with orange juice, as it would be a shame to get savaged three gardens over and have to call in the air ambulance.   

On Tuesdays we could try going via the waterways, or in this case, garden ponds and Charlie Dimmock style water features.  I’m less keen on this idea because of the neoprene wetsuits, which would of course be mandatory.  I outlined my problem with these in another blog entry, so we shall simply draw a veil over it. 

We may have to go back to the drawing board for Tuesdays, possibly a subterranean attack might be best, although the girls scream when they see worms, and they’re both pretty rubbish at digging. My brother and I were always very enthusiastic at digging, much to my mother’s chagrin.  We had a large garden in which, as you know, we were forced to spend quite a lot of our time, consequently we considered the garden our territory, regardless of the fact that my parents spent large amounts of time creating rockeries and vegetable patches and other such landscaping ideas. 

We often sabotaged many of their finer plans by trying to build war bunkers with the rockery stones, or using all the carefully constructed pea canes to make burning brands, or wrapping ourselves round the ornamental Christmas trees during a particularly disastrous bike ride. We also had pet rabbits which didn’t help. 

They had a large run in the garden which my mother considered mandatory.  She hated the idea of animals being incarcerated, so the run took up half the garden.  The rabbits were delighted as it gave them plenty of scope for their escape plans, and they were forever forming committees and digging furiously, hiding the loose earth down their britches and whistling nonchalantly so that we wouldn’t know their plans were coming together.   

My brother and I were very pleased that they dug so many deep holes as it saved us the difficult job of starting off and getting through the tough grass.  We would wait until the rabbits felt their plan had been discovered and abandoned that hole in favour of a new one.  We would commandeer the old hole and dig like maniacs in the universal childhood belief that eventually we would pop up in Australia wearing cork hats and shouting ‘g’day!’  The rabbits didn’t mind, because they thought as long as we were occupied that we wouldn’t notice them drawing maps and creating false passports out of dock leaves.  Everyone’s a winner, except my dad, who would go bonkers about the state of the lawn. 

Eventually we were banned from aiding and abetting the rabbits, and then the rabbits took full advantage of the fact that we weren’t watching their every move and escaped over the Swiss border on a motorbike fashioned from vegetable matter, so we had to find other digging methods to amuse ourselves.  Our next great digging adventure was brought on by the fact that with the rabbits gone, we wanted more pets, which we were not allowed to get from a pet shop, as my mother had had enough.   

By this stage we had some fish (Dr. Who and Layla), a canary which flew in the kitchen window one day and decided to hang out with us (I’m not kidding.  It was very impressive).  The canary was quite good because it was clearly bonkers in the first place.  My mum called it ‘Twee’, because contrary to popular belief about canaries being fabulous song birds that was the only noise it could make.  It was also orange. 

It had a cage with a little bath house attached to the side, in which it used to splash around shouting every morning.  When it didn’t like its food it used to protest by kicking it out of the bottom of the cage,  also shouting (like everyone in our family, he was never quiet).  Some of the seed fell into the cracks in our freezing stone floor and sprouted months later, much to my mum’s embarrassment.  How do you explain that your kitchen floor is yielding crops? It’s not easy. 

Twee was allowed a lot of freedom, due to my mum’s soft nature.  He would fly about the house and when he was tired he would sit on your head, gently pulling strands of hair through his beak in an affectionate, yet highly alarming manner.  One day when my dad was on the phone, Twee perched on his head and did a huge pooh, much to my dad’s annoyance and our total glee!  It was tremendously exciting.  My dad shouted and waved about and Twee sat calmly on his head, holding onto his hair and riding him like a bucking bronco!  Awesome. 

We also had lots of cats.  We had one cat called Boots, which my parents had had since before we were born.  She was very old and had a gammy leg, so she wasn’t very exciting.  She spent most of her life sleeping in a dog basket by the fire.  Occasionally she would have fits of insanity where she would hobble into the kitchen, crawl onto the table and attack things.  Why the kitchen table I don’t know, perhaps she was an explorer at heart, despite the leg.  She once shredded a lettuce to bits and we found her in a panting heap of spit and iceberg lying on the table.  Mum thought she’d had a fit and took her to the vets, but it turned out she just had a mortal aversion to lettuce.  After that we had to put it in the fridge for safe keeping in case she had a heart attack whilst mauling a Cos. 

Our other cats were more free range.  We lived next to a farm which had stray cats.  My mum used to feed two of them, who she called Bubble and Squeak.  Squeak ended up having lots of litters of kittens which she would bring over to our house because she knew that my mum wouldn’t be able to resist them and she could have endless supplies of food.  We loved it because there were kittens everywhere. 

Mum insisted on feeding them outside so that Boots’ feelings wouldn’t be hurt.  We did everything we could to smuggle them indoors, and she was forever shooing kittens out of every corner of the house.  In the cold weather they would find the strangest places to hide, which we thought was brilliant, but mum and dad found quite stressful.  One of their places was the log basket in our porch, which despite not having a door was more sheltered from the elements.  My dad would go out in the dark to get a log for the fire and shriek the place down because he’d picked up a warm, sleeping kitten!  He really wasn’t very good with wildlife.  I think he only put up with the pets because of my mum.  He did a lot of shrieking all the years we lived in the countryside!

Their other best place was to climb up the wheel arches of mum’s car and clamber into the engine, where it was nice and warm.  Many is the cold and frosty morning where we would be sitting waiting to go somewhere while mum picked cats out of the engine.  Better than flaying them alive I think! Although I'm sure it crossed mum's mind after endless weeks of de-catting the carburettor.  At the next service the man was amazed to find that the engine was gummed up with enough cat hair to knit a jumper.

Anyway, back to digging.  We decided that what we really needed were mice.  Mice would be cool.  The cats often brought us mice to play with but they either tended to be dead or half dead.  We would invariably try to nurse the half dead ones back to life, so that we could keep them as pets.  This insistent nurturing would finish them off completely, and a lot of mouse funerals took place at which Rob and I were the chief mourners.  Parts of our garden were set aside as graveyards for all the things the cats killed.  We had a fine selection of mouse, frog and shrew (it's very easy to kill a shrew.  All you have to do is look at it in a funny way and it dies of fright.  I have the feeling that shrews will never inherit the earth, despite their meekness) gravestones.  We even had one mole grave, but I feel that the mole was mortally ill before the cats pounced on it, as it was rather smelly when they dragged it over to us.  It didn’t stop us loving it dearly though!  We were disgusting children.  We never buried the rats because we hated them.  We used to lob them over into next door’s garden using the coal shovel.  I’m sure our neighbours loved us dearly! 

The only way we could think of to get a healthy mouse was to dig.  We knew that mice lived in mouse holes, so the logical thing was to dig until we found some mouse tunnels.  We dug like fury all over the garden in what we had established were likely mouse areas (the ones with the softest earth probably).  We established that once we had caught our mice, we would keep them in Dairy Lea Cheese Triangle Boxes on the side of the bath and feed them on the ends of soap that my mother didn’t want any more.  Why we decided that this was the best way to keep mice I really don’t know.  I expect it was because mum had refused to aid or abet us in our quest and we had to use what we had to hand at the time. We were resourceful as well as disgusting.

Needless to say, our mother wasn’t worried too much about the impending mouse citadel we were planning, and after a fortnight of fruitless digging and blisters the size of Latvia, we gave up our plans and spent the next few months sulking about how cruel she was, and how it wasn’t fair, etc, etc. 

The next great dig came when my parents bought Robert a metal detector for his birthday one year, and we were naturally convinced that we were in line to discover the Mary Rose but better, right at the bottom of our garden.  There was no Time Team in those days, but we were sure of a spot on Blue Peter, and riches beyond our wildest dreams, naturally.

Given the fact that mum and dad used to go mental every time they saw us approaching their beloved garden with a spade, the idea of giving Rob a metal detector seems slightly odd.  I expect my dad had swapped it with a man he knew for a Citroen 2CV or some such nonsense.  That’s how we got two pairs of over-sized roller boots with no stoppers and took half a yard of skin off of our shins and  embedded gravel in our foreheads anyway, so it seems a logical progression. 

Needless to say, the finding treasure kick was even more of a disaster than the finding mice thing, and we ended up with a five pence piece, a rusty tin can and a bead.  We also had muscles like an Irish navvy from all the digging, and mum had no beetroot crop at all that summer. After that we were forced to do our digging elsewhere.  

As I have said before, we lived in a tiny village with no shop and two whole street lights.  There were about six kids in the village and we used to hang out with each other in the holidays.  One day when we were very bored and I had been reading Swallows and Amazons, we decided to be explorers and look for the source of the stream that ran through our village.  We donned wellies and cagoules.  We took sticks for poking things, we took spades and we took biscuits.  We had no Kendall Mint Cake, so we had to improvise on the supplies. 

We spent all day splashing around and poking things in hedgerows.  Eventually we found a place where the stream went under the ground.  This was terribly exciting and we imagined subterranean caverns full of cave paintings and jewels, and possibly a skeleton or two.  We prodded it heartily with our sticks, and when we didn’t fall down into a vast bejewelled cavern, and I had filled my Wellington with water and lost the other one in some particularly sucky mud, we started digging. 

We dug hard and long and soon the water from the stream started spilling out all over the road.  This was both magnificent and exciting, and we felt that we were really getting somewhere. Where we were really getting was in hideous trouble.  The lady who lived in the cottage opposite had been watching us through the windows (small village, nothing to do), and had now realised that a tidal wave was building which if left unchecked, would potentially obliterate her cottage.  She came shrieking out of her door, down the path and lambasted us heartily standing in a pool of water up to her ankles. 

We were amazed that when we explained our mission that she didn’t get excited, take her squelching Hush Puppies off and find a spade of her own. Instead she threatened to tell our mum’s if we didn’t start putting back all the earth and make good the damage immediately, and stood over us chattering like an enraged magpie the whole time we were doing it.  Mean, just mean! 

Back to exploring I think.  On Wednesdays we could attach giant kites to the buggy and glide down to school, although my kite owning history is chequered to say the least, and I sympathise a great deal with Charlie Brown and his exploits with the great kite eating tree.  I have lost many a good kite that way. 

Thursdays would be climbing day, where we scale the pavement using crampons and ropes (a la Monty Python).  Fridays we could sky dive in from a helicopter.  It would certainly make life more interesting, and perhaps I could get on QI and meet Stephen Fry, where I could broach the adoption idea with him over a bar of Kendall Mint Cake. 

Right, I have to go and do something wondrous and exciting with potatoes to feed the ravening hordes who are massing downstairs.  Pooh! Catering is extremely boring and monotonous. 

Must share with you a couple of Tallulah gems before I go.  Last night when we were waiting in the hospital for them to discharge us, I was getting a bit fed up.  We had been waiting for many hours and I had had only an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee which tasted like engine oil to sustain me.  Tallulah looked at me and said: ‘Mama, are you illustrated about going to hospital with me?’  I explained that illustrated probably quite the word she was looking for.  After much debate it turned out that she meant ‘irritated’!  I like the thought of being illustrated much better however, and will adopt it from now on.

It put me in mind of the time when she was very small and she had discovered the joys of playing hide and seek.  She would do the usual small child/ostrich thing and merely cover her head with some handy item, thus rendering herself completely invisible!  Just to make sure that she had in fact, totally disappeared from view she would shout: ‘There’s nobody hee yerrr!’ at the top of her lungs, and voila, would immediately become totally invisible.  A good tip with which to leave you if you ever need to escape from an impossible situation I think.

Parishioners may sympathise with my poor fortune with cars...

Nonetheless, as A Man o' the Cloth,
I am prepared to Forgive;
occasionally...

Somehow,
while trawling Teh Luvvery Interwebs,

I ran across a site where the guy took a stack of photos at The Toyota Automobile Museum
(for those Parishioners with Fat Pipes™,

here's a YouTube tour - 8:53, 18,878 KB Parishioners!)

and (to me, at least) they look so professionally lit & shot!

Judging from the number of snaps he took
he has a thang - two thangs, actually, for the 1965 Toyota Sports 800 and the 1968 Toyota 2000Gt.

Me, I prefer The Mighty Nissan Cedric!

Here's a link to Planet Cedric - the internet's most comprehensive database of information on the NISSAN CEDRIC

PS: I have seen this movie!

Following links led me to some gorgeous pics of my favourite voiture - Le Citroën!
(yes, 'Tish, they're French!)

Which takes me back to France,
and a herb & Communion wine-fuelled impromptu jam session
devoted to La Déesse, Le Citroën DS - quelle nostalgie…
"DS is a homophone for "déesse" (goddess), a semantic interpretation that is marvellously apt"

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Citroën DS!

Links to the Traction, 2CV & SM are also on that page.