There is a particular cruelty to owning a vintage car.
It can sit quietly for weeks, looking impossibly handsome and filling you with thoughts of winding country lanes, pub lunches and glorious, unhurried motoring. Then the sun finally appears, everyone is ready to go, and you turn the key.
Nothing.
Our 1980 Morgan 4/4 is magnificent at being an object of desire and occasionally rather less committed to being a means of transport. Today’s indignity: a flat battery, the bonnet raised and the charger deployed while the precious sunny afternoon slowly ticks away.
Modern cars simply work. Vintage cars have moods. They require rituals, persuasion and the occasional offering to the gods of British engineering. Yet even when stranded in the barn, the Morgan somehow manages to look fabulous.
And that is why all is forgiven.
When it finally fires, there is nothing quite like it: the smell of leather, oil and warm machinery; the thin steering wheel moving in your hands; hedgerows rushing past at a speed that feels twice as fast as it really is. A simple drive becomes an occasion.
Vintage cars are inconvenient, temperamental and sometimes infuriating. They demand far more patience than they deserve.
But perhaps that is the point. You do not merely operate an old Morgan. You have a relationship with it.
Today, apparently, we are not speaking.
Today, apparently, we are not speaking.