It was Kevin who gave Cleo her name. Not me. I refuse any responsibility in this case. She was named Cleo because of the Carry-On films and in honour of Carry On Cleo in particular. I suppose it was just fair that he should choose the name, after all he had little say in the purchase which was conducted head over heals by the undersigned on eBay, partly from New York and finalised in London. Not that it made much difference – I had no idea what I was doing anyway. Let it be a warning; don’t try this at home! Not that we don’t love her, but it’s been a bit of a financial disaster, to be frank. (Still not ready to sell her, Stig and Steinar!)
If you wonder why I keep referring to her as ’she’ and ‘her’ it’s because I was taught that – starting with ships – any vehicle (if you can call ships a ‘vehicle’…) that can hold men (read ‘humans’ or ‘beings’, let’s not be sexist or beingist here) were called ’she’ as the hull of the ship could be seen as a womb that carried its cargo safely to it’s destination where it was delivered. And the figurehead of ships were female and ships usually had female names and blah blah blah. As other types of transportation entered the scene the tradition was carried over to cover all of them. And so cars, planes and even motorbikes are female – the only sample of a form of gender in English grammar.
That aside, here are a few pictures of Cleo from my drive from London to Newcastle in May. I did try to get some pictures of the wonderful new interior, but since I loaded her up from floor to ceiling it’s hard to see anything… and I totally forgot to take pictures once in Norway and she was unloaded. Silly me. Ho hum. Well, there you are. Oh – the pictures! Ok, here they are. No really, HERE:
As you can clearly see, the interior is black. No really, it is, if you look closely you can see the headrests of the front seats on either side. They’re black. I promise.
Once again, if you look closely you can see that we now have nice black seats with read piping – very stylish!
Isn’t she just GORGEOUS!?!! My Precious….
Ok, ok, I admit it! I’m an idiot!I don’t have a single decent picture of the interior! But I have a nice picture of the lucky witch that Kevin finds so irritating. Thing is, she has a story. She was given to me by a really nice man I met in Cuba in 1992, Rudy Rivero. He told me that he’d made it especially for me and that I should hang it from the mirror in my car so she could protect me from bad luck. When I told him I didn’t have a car he totally refused to believe me – it was just unthinkable for him that someone from the über-rich Europe could not own a car. Rudy: I have a car now! Her name is Cleo, she is British, black and beautiful, and every time I drive her I think of you because of the lucky witch you gave me and which is now hanging from the rear-view mirror to bring me good luck. I may be an Atheist, but my witch stays! We all need some form of superstition to help us get by.
