The Rolling Stones

It was a well known TV advertisement for Volkswagen cars.

There was the usual well to do middle class couple-obviously the preferred target market for the particular model of that global brand- on their way out somewhere in their posh togs.

The male driver looked a bit smug over his well informed purchase but was soon perplexed and troubled by an irritating squeak in the vehicle. A unique selling point for the People's Car has always been reliability and a solid build quality and so any other noises apart from those emanating from the  engine and the passage of the tyres over the road were, in the small print, eradicated. Imagine the horror of the owner at the sound of something else.

I have tried myself to seek out, at short notice, a mechanic to resolve a technical issue but try as you might it is nigh impossible to find one. There was a sole exception when one of my first company cars caught fire from faulty wiring perchance outside a main dealer for the particular make but otherwise without an appointemt some days ahead you are generally left high and dry. The man in question, surprise, surprise found access to just the right overall clad specialist who set about trying to find the source of the unexpected noise.

In methodical manner he checked the car chassis, bodywork, engine and with oil can in hand lubricated any perceived points of friction or abraison. It was only when he was checking the car interior that he noticed the female passenger's oversized ear-rings and after pushing them with his little finger was the mystery solved.

Our Father's Volkswagen 1600 Squareback Estate, bought brand new in 1971 and to this day still running well through the endeavours of my youngest brother and his wife provided many, many miles of family motoring.

I cannot say that it was noiseless motoring because early 70's cars were not as sound proofed and insulated as current production models. There was the distinctive rattle of the air cooled engine- rear mounted, a swoosh of air through ill fitting wind-down windows and poor rubber seals around the windscreen.

In the background there was always a staccato tone from the clashing together of piles of oddly shaped rocks and stones which us children had delighted in collecting from whatever beach, hillside, heathland, moor or picnic area we happened to have stopped at even for the briefest of moments.

The cross-section of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic examples would be rolling around at our feet in the rear passenger seats, rolling back and forth in the door pockets, creating small hazardous sparks-especially flinty stones- where secreted in our pockets or elsewhere in our clothing, similarly cavorting about in the space under the front bonnet or loosely laid in the glove compartment.

Father was always interested in calculating the fuel economy on the long runs to a holiday venue or visiting distant relatives but was always disappointed by the average consumption on the return leg of a journey.

We children were not thinking about such boring adult obsessions as petrol prices but more about the half ton or so of miscellaneous bits of the planet earth that we were transporting home to supplement an already impressive selection in the bottom of the cupboards in bedrooms, arranged on window cills, hiding away in the toe-end of rarely worn wellies and shoes, preserved in cotton wool in shoe-boxes, displayed on shelving or when bored of just distributed in the flower beds and borders of the house garden.

The best examples have remained with me into my adult years and I am never more than a few metres away from pinkish granite pebbles from Scotland, mud encased fossils from Lincolnshire, flinty chalks from Suffolk, devils toe nails from a lot of places and smooth bejewelled and magical stones from overseas vacations in Greece, Portugal and Australia.

I have encouraged my own children to carry on the tradition of finding interesting pebbles and stones wherever they may find themselves and sure enough they have  returned from their travels with some finely shaped and coloured examples which I gratefully and gleefully receive.