Three vehicles that pass in time...

Dear Sheddists,

there's a bundle of traffic near us right now and most of it isn't going anywhere fast real soon.  So I've had the opportunity to reflect on the passing of things.

Three vehicles.

The first I pull alongside is a small family hatchback, its reddened flanks and back window advertising the services of a miniature pony party.  I assume this refers to its equine hosts and not the absence of small friends, but conceivably it may apply to both. It brings back memories of my childhood and motes of dust drifting dreamily in the early autumn air as we race pell-mell the length of streets and gardens and row upon row of starchy, regimented privet.

We're scabby-kneed and scrubbed in our Sunday best. White shirts and khaki shorts, running in and out of the floating crinoline dresses and bows of giggling gap-toothed girls who smell strangely different, soapy and buffed in clouds of sweet perfumed talcum powder.  We wolf down egg and cress mayonnaise sandwiches, the posh ones with the crusts cut off, pick the cocktail sausages from their pin-sharp pointy sticks before diving headlong into the wobbly green and red jelly beneath bright swirls of 'hundreds and thousands', the tiny multi-coloured sugar strands that leach strange psychedelic patterns across the rich, white creamy topping in which they are sprinkled.

This is heaven and there's 'Pass the Parcel' and 'Musical Statues' and 'Pin the Tail on the Donkey' and garish party-bagged treasure still to come before mothers arrive to whisk us all home. So simple. No miniature ponies, no Disney-land Princesses, no white Hummer luxury limousines. Just simple, glorious unadulterated childhood pleasure.

Our second vehicle is huge and silvered, decorated with a smiling daisy.

The tidy waste-tanker is emboldened with crisp lettering that reads, 'We're fluent in effluent'. D-tox, is the family business of Roy and Christian Heritage.  It's the embodiment of the West Midlands - industry, application and a rich earthy humour.

The third vehicle is stately and surreal.

It's a black hot-rodded VW Caddy driven by a bearded dwarf. He's strangely serene as I under-take slowly on the blind-side and salute him.

Three vehicles that pass in time ...