In my last year at school I had two burning ambitions:  To win the Peter Debray Scholarship for history, and to win Diana Snodgrass.

Neither was an easy task.  To become the history scholar meant dedication and application, as most boys in our neighbourhood did not come from a privileged family, and a scholarship was the only way to university.  Everyone in the history class had their eye on that trophy.

To win Diana was even more difficult.  It wasn’t the local history class I had to compete against; the entire school had their eye on her.  She fuelled many an erotic fantasy.  The history scholarship merely demanded effort.  Diana demanded good looks, wit, charm, money and, if you wanted to be certain of success, a car.

Would it be vain to admit to the first three?  Certainly now my looks are not my top asset, but then, a lifetime ago, I wasn’t too bad, and though I like to think my wit and charm has grown with the years, they weren’t too bad back then either.

The problem was with the latter two.  I had little money and no car.  I could take her out on a date, but to where?  Somewhere local would be mundane, and to see her home on the bus would be humiliating.  No, it would have to be somewhere exotic, exciting, dangerous:  Hastings!

Oh, you may laugh, but back then, in the small Kent backwater where we lived, Hastings was but a dream.  Forty miles away, on the coast, in a different county.  They had ice-cream, it was rumoured, that came not just in vanilla flavour, but strawberry and chocolate, too.  You could stroll down the prom sharing a bag of fish and chips with your best girl.  You could buy her a ‘kiss me quick’ hat and then, if she was willing, kiss her slow.

And if you had a car, in the evening you could park up on top of the cliffs and … well, anything might happen.

That settled it.  I would win her, if it made me a pauper.  I started to make plans, in between the history cramming.  I would take her to Hastings on the Saturday after my final exams.  My total life savings at that point amounted to twelve pounds seventy eight pence.  Enough, perhaps, for a date.  If I was careful, maybe for an entire day out, including fish and chips.  What it wasn’t enough for, not by a long chalk, was a car.

A car!  I had to get a car!  Catching a train would be unthinkable.  Diana would never agree.  Besides, I had started to think about that cliff-top tête-à-tête.  I made investigations.  There was a local car hire business.  I say business; it was a local jack-the-lad with an ancient Ford Zephyr he would hire out.  It would cost me five pounds, plus ten pence per mile.  With petrol, that would wipe out my entire savings.

My only hope was Uncle Bill.  Uncle Bill was the type of uncle you read about in books.  He was always laughing, always willing to share a joke, and on birthdays and Christmas always ready with a postal order.

I sat down with him in early July and explained my predicament.  He was sympathetic.  I was his favourite nephew, at least when there were no other nephews around.  He wished me every luck in my endeavours.  But wouldn’t I appreciate it much more if I solved the problem on my own?  Wouldn’t it build much more character if I stood on my own two feet?  I forwarded the opinion that it would not, but he disagreed.

He did give me one little tip, though.  It is a tip that still holds true.  A car’s milometer only works when the car is going forward.

On the Saturday after my finals, I picked up the Ford Zephyr.  I reversed off the drive, through the streets and backed it up outside Diana’s house.  I gave a rakish toot-toot on the car horn and leapt out, opening the read door for my vision of loveliness to enter her chariot, like a chauffeur for a film star.

After a couple of miles reversing along country roads she did enquire as to why we were travelling backwards.  “I am driving backwards, my sweet,” I told her, “because I cannot bear to take my eyes off you.  I shall keep the car in reverse for the whole day so I can keep your face in front of me every second.”

And you thought I was exaggerating about the wit and charm.

I am a gentleman.  I shall draw a veil over the events of the day, and especially the evening.  Suffice to say, my wit and charm worked.  And, I suppose because of the extended amount of time the car spent in reverse, the milometer actually started to run backwards, so that by the time I returned it to the garage, the car hire company actually owed me money.

My date and my scholarship were both written up in the school magazine.  The headline read:

HISTORIAN MAKES A PROFIT LOOKING BACKWARDS.