It was a big old blue Vauxhall sedan. Real leather seats, real timber window frames. Not that I could appreciate the importance of such things back then.
I was small enough that perched on that real leather back seat, I could just barely see over the bottom of one of those real timber frames. If I craned my neck I could get a view of whatever we were driving past.
If I stood on the seat I knew I could get a better view, but I also knew that was a bad idea. I knew it wasn’t safe. Seatbelts hadn’t been invented yet, or if they had, they certainly hadn’t made it to our corner of suburban Brisbane, but I’d had it impressed on me that if I was standing up and the car stopped suddenly, I could expect to fly through the front windshield. I was told in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t enjoy that.
RENOIR - Words 