Joyride

An unexpected present plopping through the letter box on a cold morning brought a surge of gratitude to my thoughtful friend who had sent it.

The typography and illustration, by Sarah Godsill, evoke John Craxton’s covers for Paddy Leigh-Fermor’s books. Even, dare I say it, down to an unconvincing representation of P L-F who is supposed to be seventy-five.

Tony Scotland’s short book, you can read it in an evening, is an account of a journey from London to the Mani made in the autumn of 1990 by three elderly widows in a white Rover. The journey takes eleven days, they stay with Paddy and Joan Leigh-Fermor for a fortnight and drive home again. It could be a very dull read.

The widows are Billa Harrod, Coote Heber-Percy and Freda Berkeley. Freda kept a diary of the holiday and took photographs both of which Tony Scotland uses to describe the journey and places visited. It is an enchanting tale and, as it unfolds, Tony recounts the back-stories of his three widows and their unconventional marriages. He writes with great affection but with uncompromising honesty – something that he would not have done if they were still alive.

Joyride is a wry title. The three widows are coming to terms with living alone, grief and old age – no joyride. The exploration of these themes make for (warning: clichés ahead) a bitter-sweet, hauntingly elegiac book; so much more satisfying than the “Three Ladies in a Rover” comedy that I feared it might be. It is to be savoured with a tumbler of whisky; the preferred tipple of the widows, especially when they encounter vicissitudes. It’s not the weather in London for ouzo.