Sunshine, Chrome, Summer Roads and Love
The summer of 1986 was unusually generous. England basked in weeks of rare sunshine, and I — twenty-six, sideburns sharp and denim worn soft — polished the chrome bumper of my MG soft top until it winked like a conspirator. The car was my pride, a deep British racing green roadster with wire wheels, leather seats, and a growl that spoke of freedom. I’d spent the previous few years working to buy this beauty and was dreaming of one thing: the open road.
Anna with her Dutch-Indonesian features carried the warmth of two worlds, and her dark hair had already begun to turn honey-blonde under the English sun. She wore oversized sunglasses and a bandana knotted at her throat. We didn’t need a plan — only the road, a few hundred pounds in cash, and a ferry ticket to Calais.
With the soft top down, we drove through the Kent countryside, passing chalk hills and hedgerows in full bloom. At Dover, we queued behind Citroëns and Renaults, the scent of diesel and salt on the breeze. The ferry crossing was a slow romance of wind-whipped laughter and gull cries, and when we hit the continent, the MG took on a new voice — thrumming over French tarmac, its engine alive in the warmth of southern Europe.
We camped under the stars near Dijon, drank cheap red wine by the bottle, and found backroads that twisted through Alpine foothills and lavender fields. I drove with the hunger of youth, the wheel like a brush in the hands of a painter, sketching arcs across the canvas of Europe.
Italy arrived like a sunburst.
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From Milan to Florence, through the rolling hills of Tuscany, to the heat-hazed coast of Amalfi, the MG danced down sun-bleached lanes and through villages where time moved slower than the cicadas. Anna sang along to the radio, her hair now streaked almost gold, snapping in the wind like a flag of freedom. We swam in roadside lakes and made love in olive groves. We laughed at getting lost and argued in the sweltering streets of Rome, only to make up over gelato at midnight.
I felt the car, the woman, and the road become one story — written not in ink, but in oil, sunlight, and the scent of summer dust. we were so much in love…I was on cloud nine.
We turned north reluctantly, following the coast to Genoa and across the border again into France. By the time we reached the cliffs above Dover, the petrol gauge was dangerously low and our cash nearly gone, but neither of us cared. London was calling. I paused at the top of the white cliffs, watching the Channel shimmer. It was good to be back and I was more in love with Anna than I realised.
Anna, hair shining like ripe wheat, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Same time next year?”
I smiled, turning the key once more.
The engine purred like a promise.
