I saw a sight last night I haven’t seen for what must be over 20-odd years. Driving down the road, I saw a small group of children dragging a home made bogey up a hill by the steering-string. I have to say, the sight of it really took me back to my childhood. And yes, deep down inside, I really wanted a shot of it.
Now, for those of you that are not familiar with the term ‘bogey’, I am referring to what we in the West of Scotland called a home made death-trap of a vehicle. Folks from other geographies may variously describe it as a ‘guider’, ‘trolley’, ‘kart’, ‘soap-box cart’, ‘mini-kart’, ‘box-car’ and probably many other terms.
The idea was simple, you made your bogey out of whatever pieces of scrap you could find, then you found the steepest hill closest to where you lived and you hurled yourself down said incline, atop your home made death-trap. Making it to the bottom of the hill was a triumph. Making it to the bottom uninjured was a miracle.
The first car I had was a Mk1 Ford Escort. It was silver with a purple roof when I got it (nice eh?) but I painted it black, with a brush. As the time, I reckoned it looked great, there were no brush strokes, it looked like a professional job… for a while, until the oil based paint got scuffed and started peeling off in strips.
