Victor the Vitesse had always proved extremely reliable, and apart from the coil and dynamo just after I bought him, nothing had ever gone wrong. However, he was more than a little scruffy, and with the rebuild of Felix the Spitfire well under way I was seriously thinking about doing the same for the Vitesse. Meanwhile, Andrew was transportless because of Felix's half built state, and Toby, Mark's Spitfire, was in need of major MOT work too. Andrew got a job in Culham, and took to commuting in Mum's Ford Orion, which was inconvenient for all concerned. I decided we needed a "reserve" car for whichever of Andrew or I was without our regular one. That way Mum would not be inconvenienced. Looking for something cheap and cheerful but practical too, I looked in the TSSC magazine. There were a pair of Heralds, a 1200 saloon and a 13/60 estate, both cheap and with a Reading phone number. In fact I recognised it as a Woolhampton number, and correctly deduced that these must be the two that I often noticed on my way in to work. It transpired that the 1200 was engineless, but the estate was MOT'd, taxed and a runner. Indeed it seemed to run quite well from the brief test drive, and although rusty looked fairly sound. A deal was made and I arranged to collect "Henrietta" (as an old parking permit on the windscreen declared her to be called) that Friday. I don't know whether this decision in itself brought bad luck, but that Wednesday, on his way to work, Andrew was hit by a Montego which caused some very expensive damage to Mum's Orion. We decided that I would take Henrietta up for him to use. Then on the Thursday night I went to a party in Reading, and decided to stay overnight. The following morning the long hot summer ended abruptly with torrential rain. On the way to work my brakes locked up approaching a roundabout, and I knew there was no way I would make it round. Luckily there was nothing coming, but the spin and subsequent impact with the central mound blew out one tyre and bent a halfshaft. I managed to get a friend to help recover the Vitesse (which involved using Toby's spare wheel) and then take me to collect Henrietta. As it turned out the seller had a spare Vitesse half shaft lying around, so I bought that too, and set off back to Thatcham. I had been warned that there was an oil leak from the rocker cover gasket but not about the hopeless gear change. Still, that's easily fixed. We decided that Andrew should come down to Thatcham by train so that we could fix the oil leak and gear lever bush, and replace the driveshaft on the Vitesse. Then he could drive Henrietta home. That all went quite smoothly, and by Sunday afternoon Andrew was heading home in a nicely running Herald. At least it was nicely running until he pulled off the dual carriageway, at which point she stalled. However, she re-started reasonably easily so we thought nothing more of it. A fortnight passed, to the August bank holiday weekend. We were booked to take Felix to Holland the following week for the International Spitfire Weekend, and there were a couple of last bits to get him an MOT (albeit still half rebuilt and painted only in primer). On the way to Mum's on the Friday evening the Vitesse's gearbox packed up, so Henrietta escorted me the last few miles with only two gears (third and fourth) available to me. We decided I could use Henrietta until we had a chance to change the gearbox. On the Sunday, though, Andrew had a hockey match in Slough for which he needed to use Henrietta. Unfortunately she died on the M40, losing all power and finally refusing to restart. At vast expense she was removed (via a BMW dealer who refused to release her on a Sunday or bank holiday and charged for two nights storage) to Chalfont Park hockey club. The weekend was capped on the Tuesday when the MOT tester from hell gave Felix a severe thumbs down. We were then a family with five cars, and not one of them available to use.