Pattie, Peas and Chips

For our family it is the "go-to" destination at the annual Hull Fair. Yep, Bob Carvers Patties, Peas and Chips.

They have occupied the same pitch about mid-way down Walton Street for decades and the throng of customers in orderly queues enforce a welcome pause as you make your way down the avenue of stalls and attractions which fringe the main site.

Prior to our house move some six years ago we had always travelled to Hull Fair on the Park and Ride bus service which set us down at the Anlaby Road end of Walton Street. The procession from that point was past the charcoal barbecued Bratwurst vendor, Chestnut stove, the hawkers with helium filled balloons and novelties, the first of the Wrights Emporiums of brandy snaps, toffee apples and pomegranates, further pitches with metre upon metre of brightly coloured liquorice whips, pyramidal stacks of coconut ice and exotic fudges and interspersed with catering caravans offering all manner of culinary delights from noodles to jerk chicken, scampi, roasts, hot dogs and burgers.

Although tempted by the wonderful aromas and atmosphere of carnival treats we would stride on purposefully to Bob Carvers. It could be a long walk as our arrival around 7pm coincided with the exodus of those who had been and done Hull Fair already and were making their way in the opposite direction to us.

Imagine the feeling of swimming against a tide but in this case of humankind and you get close to the reality of the situation.

Even though focused on our goal the noise and illuminations from the big rides of the funfair, reputed to be the largest travelling fair in Europe, never fails to produce a sense of excitement and anticipation for the evening.

The canopy above Bob's establishment shines out like a beacon in stark white light. There are no subleties of coloured neon or LCD needed for such a Hull Institution.

I take the orders from our family. I don't know why I ask because apart from a few different combinations of the order of saying Pattie, Peas and Chips that is all the fare on offer. If you are seeking any variation at all then you could always try to ask for a breadcake.

The logistical operation behind Bob Carvers is tremendous.

As I stood in line, patiently but beginning to drool, I had a direct view behind the scenes.

The canvas shrouded preparation room was a mass of plastic buckets, stacked in four tiers and five deep per tier, therefore around 80 of them full of water covered chipped potatoes.

Sounds a lot of spuds and yet a young lad had just passed me with a tower of empty purple and grey buckets no doubt heading off into the night to get more.

That store of chips is probably enough for just a couple of hours of business on a typical Hull Fair evening.

A few metal roundels, antiques in their own right with the Carvers name embossed in the rim band stood buy just in case.

Extra staff are drafted in for the week of the Fair and it is a real production line from fryers to servers.

This years price list shows an increase from previous and my family order, three times gave a bit of change out of £15.

The frying ranges are basic but must glow red from their constant use from early afternoon to 11pm daily.


The chips were particularly good this year, a big improvement on the usual gritty mass. There is nothing better than to find a good place to stand on the street and watch the world go, warm polystyrene tray in hand.

Fully fed , the night is just about to begin.

A Mural Obligation

A trip to Hull City Centre during the 1970's from the family home in Beverley, some 11 miles north, invoked two very different emotions. The happiest was when the purpose was to spend the gift tokens received at Christmas in the likes of W.H Smith, Boots and HMV, the less so to go to the British Home Stores (BHS) to buy uniform and equipment for the dreaded return to school particularly after the longer holidays. 

Centrally located in Hull the BHS was originally purpose built and opened in 1963 as a large store for the Co-Operative Society, the Mutual enterprise which awarded a Dividend to its signed up Members. The philanthropic charter of the Co-Op included a desire, with available funding, to enrich the lives of the wider population and one way to achieve this was in the commissioning of works of art to adorn the exteriors and interiors of their retail premises. 

In my usual teenage moodiness on the periodic "back to school" jaunts to Hull I would keep my head down, shuffle along and have very little inclination for interaction with my parents, siblings, the general public and certainly not the built environment. 

Adopting this attitude, which I realise now in my senior years was ridiculous and not a little bit cringy , I completely missed out appreciating the beautiful mural that dominates the main western elevation of the BHS building. 

Designed by celebrated Wolverhampton artist and sculptor Alan Boyson, the large iconic mural is in Italian glass mosaic. 

The intricate nature of this material is not on first impression obvious from street level or the usual fleeting glance of pedestrians as they try to negotiate the busy road crossing and avoid double decker buses as they sweep through with great regularity. 

It is an expansive piece of work by Boyson, very much an upscaling of his previous works which prior to 1963 had included decorative features and the font of a church in Corby and perhaps his best known mural- the Tree of Knowledge  on a school in Salford, Manchester. 

The face of the Hull Co-Op mural  is fixed to a 66ft x 64ft concrete screen, itself a technical revelation for the post war construction era and is composed of 4224 slabs of one imperial foot square size. Each of these panels is made up of 225 tiny glass cubes. 

In all, a mind boggling total of just over 950,000 coloured pieces. 

The brief of the artist from the Co-Operative Society will have been to celebrate Hull and its people and what better than in the depiction of a maritime theme, on which the city had grown and thrived - specifically the fishing fleet.  

The inwardly curved facade is the by far the best part of an otherwise plain and boring functional, no frills multi storey building. 

The mural is of three, two masted stylised ships, the cross rigging resembling the silhouette of the crucifixion of Christ on the hill at Golgotha, perhaps an homage by Boyson to the ultimate sacrifice made by so many Hull trawlermen and seamen in pursuit of deep sea fishing and global ocean trade over previous centuries. Below the ships is a tempestuous looking mass of waves and the latin motto testifying to the effect of prosperity through work. 

The Co-Op building also became known as the Skyline Department Store with upper floors providing a cafe and other parts operating as a dance hall and a well known discotheque. 

In refurbishment works in 2011 the stripping of a panelled wall deep in the heart of the premises revealed another mural by Boyson of exaggeratedly large and expressive fish. It just seems to have been buried and forgotten and yet is complimentary to the main and very visible external masterpiece.

The mural is for the whole of the City being an excellent example of its kind from the post-war era which was a time of tremendous experimentation and exuberance for public art – as well as architecture. 

However, murals still tend to be regarded as fleeting, transient and unimportant although paintings and sculpture from this same period and often by the same artists are seen as fit subjects for gallery display and academic study. Many are still frequently ignored and even destroyed.

Post-war murals are an endangered species and the fate of Hull's iconic landmark is now in the balance. 

The very publicised and shameful demise of BHS saw the end of their forty year residency in the city centre and the building is, on and off, a matter of much speculation as to redevelopment or demolition and clearance. 

In 2016 Hull Civic Society applied for the mural to be Listed under the criteria of being of local significance and a nationally important historic structure. Such a designation affords greater protection under planning law. 

Precedent already existed with Boyson's "Tree of Knowledge" mural in Salford attaining Listed Status in 2009 with the reasons cited being;

• the high level of aesthetic and artistic quality represented in a bold and striking composition
• the clever use of colour, incised decoration, textures and mixed media, including ceramics, concrete, tiles and pebbles
• that it is a rare surviving example of a bespoke 1960s ceramic mural produced by the successful and prolific artist, Alan Boyson
• that it is a good example of the integration between art and architecture, and the 1950s/60s policy of enhancing communities through the incorporation of public art in the public realm.

Shockingly, the decision of Historic England, who have responsibility for Statutory Listing, was that the Hull Co-Operative mural did not reach the standard compared to other examples. News today is that alleged "asbestos in the substrate" has condemned the mural and its donor building to demolition.

It is bad enough to contemplate that Hull is to lose such a great example of muralism. 

Britain’s fine stock of murals is diminishing fast, as changing fashions, weather, vandalism and commercial pressures take their toll. 

Alan Boyson- muralist and sculptor

Helter Skelter

Yep, I wrote this a few years ago now and it does get a run out every first week in October..................

Hull Fair is a festival for the City.

It is magnificent that the travelling week long Fair retains its status as the largest of its type in Europe and possibly the world.

There are many challengers but I can confidently say that the people of Nottingham in particular have had a fair goose-ing again this year based on the 2019 Hull Fair.

I was going to write about the Fair from an historic and reflective aspect. Something like, for the 18th Century;

"I drove my beast and fowl all the way along the Anlaby Road Turnpike for to sell and trade on the showground but got turned away by the Police Community Support Officers and then incurred a penalty fine for inappropriate use of the bus lane for herding"

or, 19th century ;

"I travelled to the fairground by hansom cab, cost me a silver shilling which is outrageous profiteering, and  proceeded to have my frock coat, gaiters and spats ruined by the many puddles on the rough landed area. Subsequently and to my horror my top hat fell off on the Waltzers and I got stir fry noodle stains and Bratwurst on my Irish linen shirt front"

or popular 20th Century;

"I was at the fair in my full Teddy Boy gear cruisin' and a-bruisin' for a bust-up when a large group of Emo's approached and made me feel quite melancholy and gawdily over dressed. They always look so clean and stylish or..........my Bay City Roller scarf, tied tightly around my wrist got snagged on the top of the junior roller coaster and I had to be cut free and rescued by the emergency services"

and, finally, current 21st century;

"We went, yeah, on the rides, ok, yeah and it was minging, yeah because Chazzer right, tried to take a piccy, yeah,  on his i-phone but wicked, right his mam tagged him, yeah and, right,he had to go back to the school, right, yeah to teach a year 12 class, yeah, LOL. Catch us on Facebook or Twitter"


I opted, however, for a more socio-economic approach mainly because there have been many letters sent to the local press in criticism of how, in dire times of credit crisis and cut backs, people still have disposable income to lavish on the attractions of the Fair.

Let me be clear on my position on this.

The week of Hull Fair is as set in stone in the family calendar, outlook express and text alerts as nothing else apart from Easter and Christmas and is therefore budgeted for.

In the weeks prior to the arrival of the Fair there is a noticeable shortage of 2p's and 10p's in the local economy because they have been secreted away for the slots and falls.

Small children are subversively indoctrinated with Peppa Pig and Toy Story so that they are more than thrilled to be bought a foil based inflatable of their favourite characters.

Menfolk frequently disappear to their sheds to practice throwing darts at playing cards stuck onto odd pieces of melamine kitchen worktop.

The Atkins or other high protein diets are accelerated in preparation for being surrendered to a polystyrene tray of Bob Carvers's gritty chips, mushy peas and a pattie.

Teenagers are seen stretching themselves from door frames or on the climbing apparatus at the reccy lest they fail to reach the minimum height for going on the Hammer of Thor, Upside-Downie, round and roundie Mega ride.

The Fair is for all ages and it is perfectly possible to pass a few hours there with little or no expenditure other than a paper wrapped packet of Wrights of Brighouse brandy snap and a past best sell by date pomegranate.

The whole event is about atmosphere. It is a collective enjoyment of a heritage and feeling shoulder to shoulder with fellow citizens who are also having a difficult time making ends meet or have an unopened letter on their kitchen table from their employer which is just too hard to get around to opening because, odds on, it is not a thank you and a hard earned and fully justified bonus.

That is just not plain fair. There are not many things, after all, in our modern lives, that are.

Hull Fair. The Money-go-round

I gave in to a stereotypical middle aged geek urge to try to calculate the hourly income generation of Hull Fair.

This was written a couple of years ago now and so some of the prices for rides and nosh might have shown a small increase with inflationary pressures- especially the novelty balloons.

This is my calculation based on guesstimate, prejudice, inappropriate stock judgements and not a very detailed knowledge of the economics of a very large, slick and efficient commercial enterprise.

I divided up the Fair into broad groups based on form and function.

This covers the multi-million pound Mega Rides right down to the individual hawker with a fistful of helium balloons.

I then estimated the average spend of a visitor to each category, how many visitors could be served at a time and how many times the transaction could be done per hour.

For example, Bob Carvers Chip Emporium has about 15 servers who could turn around a punter every two minutes from order to payment therefore 30 per hour at an average spend of £7.40 assuming 2 portions of pattie, chips and peas.

I applied this across the full range even down to Eva Petulengro Fortune Teller and stalker of Coronation  Street Stars who can, I guess, throw considerable uncertainty into the ongoing lives of 6 people per hour for £5 a go.

The full calculation is as follows;

Fast Food Concessions.
Average take £3, 5 servings at a time, 2 minutes duration, 30 per hour, 50 stalls

Fortune Tellers.
Average take £5, 1 at a time but with 5 caravan based clairvoyants, 10 minutes consultation, so 6 per hour.

Major Rides.
£2.50 average fare, 25 per ride, 12 revolutions, cycles or inversions per hour, 20 such high tech marvels of inertia and motion.

Traditional side stalls.
£1.50 per chuck, launch, shot, hook a duck, 10 people at a time, 2 minutes of adrenaline soaked enjoyment, 30 per hour across 40 very similar stalls with this years top promotion of Meerkats.
Special category for dart throwing stalls.£1.50 , 10 men, 2 minutes including a cigarette, 30 per hour, 20 anachronistic and chauvinistic booth operators.

Bob Carvers, carried over from the illustrative section above.

Children's rides.
£1 fare from grandma's purse. 20 per ride unless the toy cars have not yet been dettol'd so allow for 75% occupancy, 12 sessions per hour, I reckon about 10 old style rides just surviving the high tech expectations of the under-5's.

Amusements/slots/falls.
£2 average spend, a lot of 2p's, 50 punters per arcade, disillusionment kicks in with fresh blood every 5 minutes, 5 arcades all possibly operated by the same company.

One-off specials.
Difficult to see how these actually pay the operators. Cost of £10 per person, teamed up possibly with a perfect stranger to be elastic-launched no-where and be photographed of how you would look faced with the your worst nightmare or entering the Big Brother House. 10 minute set up and ride time so only 5 boings per hour. Possibly 2 of these ridiculous pieces of showboating equipment.

Traditional stalls selling candy floss, toffee apples, liquorice whips.
Average spend £2, well staffed so 10 people served at a time, 2 minutes customer interface time, 30 similar stalls but strong representation from Wrights of Brighouse.

Hawkers
Vendors of balloons, light-up hats, battery operated pets in baskets, whistles reminiscent of childhood Punch and Judy but cringingly annoying after 5 seconds. £3 per spend, 12 sales per hour with 30 high viz vested sellers.

I think that I have covered all income generating areas but if you can think of any more please fill in the dotted lines and carry over to my gross figure....................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................................

As the Americans always say incorrectly ' Now for the math'.

My hourly gross figure working through my calculations comes to £105,420 per hour for the peak evening sessions from 7pm to closing time.

This produces a global gross figure for the peak hours and over the 8 nights of the Fair of £3,373,440.

Making allowances for bad weather, exceptionally fine weather and those afraid of the dark who only attend in the daylight hours there is considerable scope for fluctuations in figures.

There are of course significant costs to be offset against this figure which I, no doubt, will ponder in the wee small waking hours of the next week or so.

What's that at the bottom of the garden?

The phrase "not in my back yard" is well used in letters of complaint from householders to Planning Authorities where a particularly contentious development  proposal or scheme galvanises a local community into action.

There is nothing more motivating to a normally benign and passive neighbourhood than a perceived threat on the value of properties or to affect demand and saleability. 

This could be a Planning Application for a fast food takeaway, the setting up of an accommodation hostel for the homeless or troubled or a waste incinerator. These are very local issues. On a national scale the publicised route of the HS2 High Speed Rail Link has blighted large areas of housing and land. 

The Planning process in England does invite public consultation and a well organised campaign of objections and challenges can sway the decision makers as long as the arguments are backed by bona fide references to policy and practice rather than just being knee jerk and vested interest grounds. 

I came across a very interesting case just this week in the suburb of a large and prosperous City in the Yorkshire Region. 

The origins of the case go back to the 1940's when a rural area, then some 3 miles from the City Centre, was established as a wartime airstrip. Large and cavernous buildings or hangars were constructed for the repair and maintenance of heavy bombers alongside a base in active service in the war effort. 

These were serious structures and in the hard earned peace of the post war era they had an ongoing suitability and therefore value for the storage of grain.

As the City expanded in what was a major period of affluence the landed areas up to and around the hangars were developed  with, at that time the focus being on manufacturing and heavy industry. The City itself was foremost in the UK for railway engineering , chocolate and confectionery with a number of global brands present. In the late 20th Century these traditional employers gave way to service industry with the siting of business parks, a shopping district and the proliferation of showrooms and workshops for motor vehicle sales and servicing. 

Large areas of the suburb were Zoned by the City Planners for different uses and inevitably this included the release of tracts for residential estates. 

As part of the natural expansion of the City the first estates in the 1990's and early 2000's simply attached themselves to existing streets and avenues. However, the desirability of the area and good levels of employment saw ever increasing demand for housing land and gradually the less attractive parcels came up for development. 

The hangars, originally out in the countryside but now firmly suburban, were now surplus to requirements and Planning Permission was granted for their demolition and with the release of land  as a mixed scheme of commercial, retail and yet more residential development. 

One of the hangars made way for a supermarket and car park. Beyond the space previously occupied by two other hangars area a National House Builder commenced a nice estate which was massively over-subscribed by prospective buyers, so much so that the majority of plots were sold "off-plan" as in before even any ground-works had begun. 

The glossy marketing brochure and slick Sales Suite at the entrance to the site showed the proposed phases of the estate and vague references to possible future development on the adjoining sites not in their ownership. 

The mixture of house types appealed to all aspirations from large detached through to smaller town houses. Although somewhat above the regional pricing average there was no shortage of willing buyers, either for their own occupation or for a rental investment. 

The area had changed dramatically in its identity in just a handful of decades. 

I was inspecting one of the end terraced houses just yesterday. 

It was close to the main road and some 200 metres from the supermarket premises in a pleasant street-scene of neatly trimmed lawns and regimented parking bays. 

What troubled me, however, was what was emerging out of the ground immediately behind the houses. 

On the broad former footprint of one of the hangars and directly in view was the structural steel skeleton of what was clearly going to be a huge building. The homeowner I met was not at all phased by the looming elevation but then again she wouldn't be as she was in the process of selling up and moving away for work. 

The steels were about 10 metres up and allowing for the slope of the roof perhaps another 2 or 3 metres more. 

The homeowner, in seeing my shock, remarked that when completed it would be illuminated and therefore deter crime. I was thinking more along the lines that, facing west, it would reflect and intensify the sun to a state of painful glare in the longer seasonal days of the year.

Upon consulting the Council Planning File on my return to my office it appeared that some 140 of the estate residents had written in with strong objections. These were firmly united in the use of the phrase "not in my back yard".

The building was, irony upon irony, to be for Self Storage which is a relatively new phenomena arising from modern houses shrinking in size causing chattels and goods to require somewhere to be kept. 

The Planners had originally sided with local opposition to reject the development but they had been powerless to argue against National and Local Zoning and infrastructure requirements. 

Yet more irony was that the success of the housing estate had actually paved the way for what was seen as essential complimentary land uses of this type.

I did feel a bit sorry for the homes directly affected by the edifice of storage central but at least they would not have to walk very far to visit their personal belongings. In a win-win situation they could even benefit to some extent by the windbreak effect of the massive clad monster.

Welcome Home

I did not feel anything that could be called out of the ordinary or strange.

Granted, the bungalow was a bit dour looking, typically 1950's style in wire cut corporate style facing bricks and the dark appearance was only compounded by the now established, but at one time, brand new wood stained finished hardwood windows and doors.

In fact the place on first impression was quite boring, nestling in a large corner plot, within very thickly lush and green boundaries in a now rather unrestrained privet hedging that was so high that in a gusty wind there was good reason to expect it to just blow down flat and broken.

The return to nature was to be expected given that the owner had died some months before. After a flourish of concerned interest and a bit of jockeying for position , cap in hand, by the nearest relatives it was revealed  that the property had long since been traded for a small Annuity with an Equity Release Company .

Consequently, there was nothing to inherit apart from  few ornaments and knick-knacks. With this realisation the number of potential beneficiaries of the estate evaporated to just one distant, elderly cousin who would sadly miss his weekly visit for a cup of tea and reminiscence of family things.

I got to the bungalow when it had been largely cleared of the collected chattels of someones life and endeavours. A few bits of furniture remained awaiting the perusal of the man in the white charity van or failing that just a house clearance company whose costs to remove said items were greater than the value of the goods. Room corners were taken up by a few small stacks of books, mostly hardback coffee table publications on the Royal Family, Royal Air Force, Royal Horticultural Society and other things Realm and Empire. There were also carefully trussed and tied bundles of bed linen and towels which showed no apparent sign of ever having been used.

The former occupant had been there a long time. This was evident from the dark patches where framed pictures, prints and photographs had been hung and preserved the wallpaper from the bleaching and fading effect of the sun as it penetrated deep into the hallway and living room on the south facing side of the bungalow. I even thought that the property may only have had the one owner from new in that the internal doors were the original flush faced and featureless type which otherwise would have been prioritised by a new incoming resident for replacement in those very flimsy, pressed panelled and corrugated cardboard formed ones.

Kitchen and bathroom fittings were similarly dated, the former limited to a chipped enamelled sink and a few wooden units and the latter to a blushing pink suite with an oversized but shallow draught cast iron bath. The bedrooms at the cooler north side of the bungalow were a bit dark and fusty, one being dominated by a wall to wall array of cupboards, doors ajar and loose on their hinges following a rifling through by the previous waves of scavenging family members. It struck me that there was no space for a bed in the room. The occupier had lived alone. The carpet, in th adjacent main bedroom bore the indented outline of a single bed and with a compressed path of fibres in a well worn route in and out of the room.

Saying it was a bungalow was not strictly accurate. A ladder type access had been formed many years prior into the loft space. It was of a  narrow, steep, hamstring tugging gradient requiring some upper arm effort to ascend in the absence of a stout handrail or similar. I popped my head into the opening at the top. There was some daylight from a grouping of four glass tiles, reclaimed from a much older property but fitting snugly amongst the post war pantiles of the roof.

As my eyes became accustomed to the different light the room revealed a large flat boarded arrangement, which on a level plane was just a mish-mash of colours and textures. A bit of blue, grainy green, earth brown and black. Easing myself up to almost full height under the roof ridge the display was now in full view. It was what remained of quite an expansive model train track .

I think that I blurted out "ooohhh" aloud  in a boys own expression of excitement at the sight of the layout before remembering my training as a Surveyor and quickly assessing if many apparent hours of enjoyment of the train set had been to the structural detriment of the roof framework. It had not, in fact what had formed the main line of the set-up had been run in a very tortuous route so as not to disturb the integrity of the roof. All timbers remained in position even where there may have been a temptation to apply the hand-saw to allow the Flying Scotsman to negotiate an obstructing rafter.

I could easily imagine the sights and sounds of a fully operational rail network under those eaves. I had to negotiate the steep access backwards to get back to the main part of the bungalow. The former owner, from my observations had been either an engineer from the precision of the layout or a seafarer well used to clambering between decks on similarly angled ladders.

I finished off my visit in the back garden. The unseasonably warm start to the spring had encouraged a normally well regimented lawn and borders to run riot giving the appearance of dereliction and decay. A few concrete gnomes, their gawdy colours faded sat around looking glum in the company of a couple of stone fawns and a bird bath. The side gate onto the street had been dislodged from its post and I wedged it back and braced it with the wheelie bin as a small gesture of respect.

To say that I did not feel anything at all was as far from the truth as possible.

For a few moments I had seen the bungalow as through the eyes of its former proud owner. What had, at first, resembled an empty shell stripped of its goods had taken on the form of a safe refuge, a comforting environment of cherished belongings and above all a home. I had not been spooked or phased by my experience. Perhaps, in my empathy the bungalow had welcomed my intrusion. I was not a threat like previous visitors intent on scavenging and looting in misguided family loyalties.

I could appreciate the life and times of the former occupant and had some sadness at how things had turned out.

It was not therefore surprising that some months later the Asset Managers for the property contacted me for a very unusual request. The bungalow had been actively advertised for sale and had excited a good bit of interest from prospective buyers. However, none of the parties had progressed to an offer in spite of the clear opportunity of acquiring it at very advantageous price. The feedback was unanimous that the viewers had all experienced an odd feeling but could not be more specific as to what it was. It was enough of a strange feeling to be a deal breaker.

I reported that some people were a bit over sensitive in the case of an empty property, illogically superstitious and suddenly possessing an awareness of supernatural senses and powers. The voice on the end of the phone line agreed with me and we laughed a bit at there being "nowt as queer as folk"

It was wholly apparent to me that the bungalow was undertaking its own vetting process as to who it would welcome as its new owner.

The Electric Car Must Die

The BBC Children's TV programme, Blue Peter could always be relied upon to showcase interesting things.

Such was the case in the early 1970's when presenters Valerie Singleton and John Noakes demonstrated the first production line electric car - the Enfield 8000.

Given its rather ugly and bulbous shape, odd proportions and outrageous wrap around windscreen it was still regarded as an example of pioneering technology.

We may not regard it against today's design offerings as faintly futuristic but back then it was striking and very much bucking the trend of very square and boring motor car body shapes, particularly of other home ground brands and marques.


My younger self, aged under 10 at the time of that Blue Peter broadcast fully expected that by the time I would be old enough to drive it would be in a world where electric vehicles were the most common form of transport. I wondered and daydreamed about what would be available if the pace of development in electric propulsion matched that of the emerging computer , communications and space-race technologies

John Noakes in the Blue Peter studios championed the Enfield as a car for our cities and with the ecological benefits of zero emissions and quiet operation.

Everything looked ready for a massive push towards electric cars for the masses and with the Enfield 8000 in the forefront of the revolution.

You have to wind back a few years to a challenge laid down Government Minister Tony Been for car makers to develop a prototype electric car primarily for the functional and promotional use of the UK Electricity Boards.

The likes of Ford and Bond (famous for their fluorescent orange Bug model) entered their prototypes but the winner was a relative unknown, Enfield Automotive.

The prize was an order for 66 fleet vehicles and this was the catalyst for the production line of the 8000 model to begin.

The Enfield was built on a thin tubular metal type chassis and with the main bodywork in aluminium. The reason for this combination was clear in that out of the kerbside weight of 975 kilos almost half was from the chunky lead acid batteries, reported to have been of tractor specification, and all within a vehicle shorter in length than a Mini.

The technological attributes included a better aerodynamic co-efficient than a contemporary Porsche, rapid torque generated acceleration through the automatic transmission, a top speed of 48mph which was perfectly acceptable in city and urban streets and the ability to be charged from a standard 3 pin socket.

This gave a range of around 40 miles on a full charge.

Those behind the design included top automotive engineers known for vehicles such as the Lotus Elite.

On a closer inspection many of the components may have been recognisable from other manufacturers with parts and fittings from Reliant, Hillman and from what would become British Leyland.

The marketing angle was as a family car although in reality there were only two front seats and a space behind. Motoring journalists complimented the 8000 on light steering, easy parking and as a nice drive. At a starting price of £1000 it was quite an expensive item and put into context when you could buy a Mini for £400.

The principal backer of Enfield Automotive was a Greek Shipping Millionnaire with the wealth generated by supplying seagoing tankers subsidising the move into car making.

In the fuel crisis in the mid 1970's and with around 60 of his Supertankers laid up without work the major players in the Petroleum Industry were reputed to have approached the Magnate with an offer of a long lease of the vessels but conditional on the winding up of the electric car business.

Faced with bankruptcy there was no option left and in 1976 the last Enfield rolled off the production line.

All had looked promising for mass production and global demand for the Enfield but financial, economic and conspiratorial factors would combine to kill off this threat to the fossil fuelled combustion engine and, in effect, cause the electric car to be shelved for the next 30 years.

The hopes and anticipation of my younger self looking forward to an all electric car world would be dashed and deflated in this way. Back then the problems and damage inflicted on the climate by dependency on petrol and diesel were known but powerful concerns suppressed and stifled them for their own profitable gains