Moscow Theme Stag Night

For a good few years from the 1970's to the mid 1990's it was commonplace to see the Eastern Bloc manufactured Lada Cars on the streets of Hull.

Not necessarily moving or roadworthy and with a strange mottled paintwork finish largely concealing chronic corrosion the vehicles formed a large proportion of the city's Taxi Fleet and were a viable, although legendarily unreliable, choice for but not always low cost family transport.

That same brand is now regarded as being in that 'Classic' category  but warranting a specific sub category of 'Classic', reserved for vehicles that should just not have survived to attain such status.

For all the many hours and miles covered collectively by Lada's in the HU postcodes over the two decades I can only admit, knowingly, to have partaken in one journey. It was on my stag night. I was in the Old Town with family and friends on a crawl around the famous public houses. Some still survive today. The Black Boy, Sailmakers, Olde White Hart, The White Hart (still old), The Bell being those I remember before I was ceremoniously thrown into the former dock basin, thankfully a shallow water feature but still a bit stagnant, smelly, streaked with bird whiting and very cold.

The impact of hitting the water, I seem to imagine an Olympic standard dive at the time but actually think I was playfully lowered in a bit like a mars bar into a deep fat fryer, was enough to half-sober me up.

The rest of any alcoholic stupor was well and truly purged from my system by the subsequent taxi ride in a Lada, some 6 miles out to one of the villages where my wife to be and the Best Man's wife were having a quiet girl's night in.

It was before the construction of the very long and straight dual carriageways which now make up five and a half of the six miles. The Lada, with its sheepskin coat clad and dour driver and two of us, initially carefree but soon to be frightened, passengers took off from the Lowgate taxi rank as though from the front of the grid at a Grand Prix.

The car creaked and groaned arthritically as it took the first corner to double back down the old town High Street. The sound could quite easily have been the shearing away of the body shell from the chassis. High Street is a legitimate short cut to get back to the river crossing at Drypool Bridge but most of the carriageway is in ancient cobbles. Yet more involuntary loosening of welds and bolted connections was taking place as the Lada seemed to target the areas of most displaced, raised and loose cobble stones. The engine mountings joined in the overall complaining noises of a car that should have long since been retired or scrapped.

High Street seemed to be twice or more of its actual length before the driver swung wildly right at its northern end to merge with the busy saturday night traffic on the inner ring road. Hedon Road was a bit quieter and it was strange to see the deserted roadside parking bays and shuttered business premises on what, during the working week, was a hive of activity with congested lanes, heavy transport vehicles, mobile catering caravans for the workforce and a variety of noises and odours from large scale wood machining to bacon banjo's.

To our driver it was an opportunity to really put his foot down and the Lada gave an indignant surge of power from 40mph to at least 45mph. My senses were heightened by the very real fear of being in harms way and each increment of increased speed was multiplied to twice the actual. I was comforted by the fact that I had read somewhere in the motoring press that this model of Lada only had a top speed of 70mph, downhill and with  freakish tail wind..

As we were driven past the large Eastern Dock complex I glimpsed all manner of wildlife running for the cover of the verge. A couple of urban foxes and something of cat size but definitely a rat. At least they were getting plenty of advanced warning of the approach of the vehicle. I half expected a few twitching curtains from the residences along the road but this was probably quite a regular route for the taxi companies and given the volumes of daytime traffic this was still quite a subdued level of noise even from a single fiendish car.

The good road surface finished just beyond the wide gated entrance to the BP Chemical Plant at Saltend. The skeletal towers of the processing operations always put on a good show of lighting and emissions and when I dared open my eyes I thught for a moment that we were approaching the Manhattan skyline.

Speed limits were evidently suspended for the night as the car threw up dust and litter through the historic town of Hedon. Beyond the built up part of town I knew that the road to our destination village was extremely tortuous, sharp bends, narrow and hedged in and rough surfaced from agricultural vehicle use. Our driver took the straightest, shortest line very skillfully. How he knew that there would be no other traffic approaching through the blind bends was a mystery down to either good fortune or recklessness.

The Lada almost separated again from its chassis in the exercise of an emergency stop outside the Best Mans house. If the passenger door had fallen off in true circus style I would not have been at all surprised. I was now completely sober, shaking and greeted my wife to be with a long embrace and a mental note to start off a life insurance policy as soon as the nuptuals were concluded.