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Can I tell you about one of the best presents I ever had? Without a doubt, all I ever wanted was a go-cart. This is true, I was about, like, 5, 6, 7 and I eventually, for Christmas- I wasn't spoilt in the sense that I got pocket money, but I always got what I wanted at Christmas eventually, 'cos, you know, working class mothers, they'd get it out of the catalogue, and pay for it for the rest of the year. So I got, really, as many presents as anyone else, and I got this go-cart. It was a little red go-cart, and it was a pedal one, and I'd run home from school, and I'd be in it. I'd be up and down the garden for hours, and I'd have to come in for my tea, and this was fantastic. This went on for, like, weeks and weeks and weeks, through the summer, through the next summer, and it was just a fantastic go-cart. And I'd show off. Then one day I came home - and it was always at the back of the shed, up against the shed - and I went in and I couldn't see it. And so I went to the back door - my mum was like washing up and that, and I went "Where's my go-cart?". I thought, it hasn't been nicked, she went "Your dad swapped it."...I went ... "He what?" And I was going to be brave, I went "He what?", she went "He swapped it for a wheelbarrow", and I could see she didn't approve of this, and she was thinking "I'm going to tell him, and then I'm going to, you know, have this out." And I went "Right", she went "It's your wheelbarrow." And I went to the back of the shed, and there was this wheelbarrow. He swapped it with a bloke called Jimmy Dublin, who he worked with ... I think he was an Irish gentleman, that's why, I don't know what his real name was. And I think my dad must have been drunk, and he went "I want to get my son a go-cart", and my dad was "Well, my kid's got one, he's probably had it for a year, he's probably bored with it", and he said "Ah, I'll give you this wheelbarrow." And I went to this wheelbarrow, and it was caked in concrete, I could hardly lift it - just nicked off a building site, obviously. And I'd be there for hours, trying to push this wheelbarrow, up and down the garden, right, and it was OK though, 'cos I was going on holiday soon. I, seven years running, went to Bognor Regis, place called Riverside, 'cos some woman round the way had a caravan, that we got free for a week, and it was great, wonderful. I used to go there with my Mum and my Nan ... and I met a little friend, who's about my age, we're both sort of like 8. And he'd hired a go-cart, and he came round, he came round to my caravan... I went "I've got a go-cart." And my Mum, I remember my Mum opening the window of the caravan, and going "Don't lie." and I went "I had a go-cart, I had a go-cart." ~R.G. (as told on 24 November 2001)
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