Activities of David Shoestring

Every year as a youngster, I was overawed by the arrival Uncle Fred's asthmatic side valve Ford, which had wheezed its way over Cotswold's crown, on its way to Wattville Road from Swindon town. For once a year, every summer, on a Sunday, the family gathered at the house they once called home, arriving at the little house in Handsworth, in proudly polished cars that sparkled with shiny chrome.
Uncle Alfred's Standard Vanguard created quite a sight, with its futuristic dashboard made from cream-coloured Bakelite. Its bloated, bulbous, bodywork was painted a ghastly metallic green, but it boasted the very latest built-in car radio, and fashionable split windscreen. We arrived in Dad's '47 Jag', cutting a very sporting stance, with its stylish, long-flowing wings hinting of speed and romance. On its bonnet a silver mascot; a leaping-jaguar with wide open jaws; huge Lucas headlamps; wire wheels, and front-opening ‘suicide' doors.
(My parents lived the closest, needing only to travel from Handsworth Wood. But somehow, as usual, Len and Sylvia arrived half an hour late, which for them, everyone thought was pretty good.)
And so, all the family collided in Grandma's trap, for kisses, and gossip, and lunch and a nap: Fresh carrots, tinned peas and a thick-pastry meat pie, gloopy gravy and mashed potatoes, piled ridiculously high. Followed by a treacle pudding laced with laughter, wobbled in on a cheap tin tray, before Grandma gathered together all the youngsters, and shooed us outside in the garden to play. The mums clattered crocks in the kitchen, comparing their husbands and woes; Alf dozed in an armchair smoking his pipe, dropping hot ash all over his clothes.
...

A Stalking Horse,
A Stalking Horse,
Our Kingdom
For a Stalking Horse
...

Boris Johnson & The Candidate Rap

I'm counting on you
As an Etonian ‘old boy',
...