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  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped the ancient sister. ‘I’ve got to concentrate!’

  Down the drive we went and out into the village of Llandaff itself. Fortunately there were very few vehicles on the roads in those days. Occasionally you met a small truck or a delivery-van and now and again a private car, but the danger of colliding with anything else was fairly remote so long as you kept the car on the road.

  * * *

  Drivers and cars had to be licensed in Britain from 1903 – but nobody was actually tested to see if they could drive a car until 1934.

  * * *

  The splendid black tourer crept slowly through the village with the driver pressing the rubber bulb of the horn every time we passed a human being, whether it was the butcher-boy on his bicycle or just a pedestrian strolling on the pavement. Soon we were entering a countryside of green fields and high hedges with not a soul in sight.

  ‘You didn’t think I could do it, did you?’ cried the ancient sister, turning round and grinning at us all.

  ‘Now you keep your eyes on the road,’ my mother said nervously.

  ‘Go faster!’ we shouted. ‘Go on! Make her go faster! Put your foot down! We’re only doing fifteen miles an hour!’

  * * *

  Roald Dahl bought a car in 1936 – for the grand sum of £14. He must have been one of the very first people to take the new driving test.

  * * *

  Spurred on by our shouts and taunts, the ancient sister began to increase the speed. The engine roared and the body vibrated. The driver was clutching the steering-wheel as though it were the hair of a drowning man, and we all watched the speedometer needle creeping up to twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty. We were probably doing about thirty-five miles an hour when we came suddenly to a sharpish bend in the road. The ancient sister, never having been faced with a situation like this before, shouted ‘Help!’ and slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel wildly round. The rear wheels locked and went into a fierce sideways skid, and then, with a marvellous crunch of mudguards and metal, we went crashing into the hedge. The front passengers all shot through the front windscreen and the back passengers all shot through the back windscreen. Glass (there was no Triplex then) flew in all directions and so did we. My brother and one sister landed on the bonnet of the car, someone else was catapulted out on to the road and at least one small sister landed in the middle of the hawthorn hedge. But miraculously nobody was hurt very much except me. My nose had been cut almost clean off my face as I went through the rear windscreen and now it was hanging on only by a single small thread of skin. My mother disentangled herself from the scrimmage and grabbed a handkerchief from her purse. She clapped the dangling nose back into place fast and held it there.

  Not a cottage or a person was in sight, let alone a telephone. Some kind of bird started twittering in a tree farther down the road, otherwise all was silent.

  My mother was bending over me in the rear seat and saying, ‘Lean back and keep your head still.’ To the ancient sister she said, ‘Can you get this thing going again?’

  The sister pressed the starter and to everyone’s surprise, the engine fired.

  ‘Back it out of the hedge,’ my mother said. ‘And hurry.’

  The sister had trouble finding reverse gear. The cogs were grinding against one another with a fearful noise of tearing metal.

  * * *

  The Dahl family moved away from Cumberland Lodge in Llandaff in 1927. They stayed for a few weeks at ‘17, The Park’, in Golders Green, north-west London, while Mrs Dahl was finding a house that would be right for her large family. She settled on this one – a house called ‘Oakwood’ in Heath Road, Bexley. Now the journey to school in Derbyshire was over 100 miles from home!

  * * *

  ‘I’ve never actually driven it backwards,’ she admitted at last.

  Everyone with the exception of the driver, my mother and me was out of the car and standing on the road. The noise of gear-wheels grinding against each other was terrible. It sounded as though a lawn-mower was being driven over hard rocks. The ancient sister was using bad words and going crimson in the face, but then my brother leaned his head over the driver’s door and said, ‘Don’t you have to put your foot on the clutch?’

  The harassed driver depressed the clutch-pedal and the gears meshed and one second later the great black beast leapt backwards out of the hedge and careered across the road into the hedge on the other side.

  ‘Try to keep cool,’ my mother said. ‘Go forward slowly.’

  At last the shattered motor-car was driven out of the second hedge and stood sideways across the road, blocking the highway. A man with a horse and cart now appeared on the scene and the man dismounted from his cart and walked across to our car and leaned over the rear door. He had a big drooping moustache and he wore a small black bowler-hat.

  ‘You’re in a fair old mess ’ere, ain’t you?’ he said to my mother.

  ‘Can you drive a motor-car?’ my mother asked him.

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘And you’re blockin’ up the ’ole road. I’ve got a thousand fresh-laid heggs in this cart and I want to get ’em to market before noon.’

  ‘Get out of the way,’ my mother told him. ‘Can’t you see there’s a child in here who’s badly injured?’

  ‘One thousand fresh-laid heggs,’ the man repeated, staring straight at my mother’s hand and the blood-soaked handkerchief and the blood running down her wrist. ‘And if I don’t get ’em to market by noon today I won’t be able to sell ’em till next week. Then they won’t be fresh-laid any more, will they? I’ll be stuck with one thousand stale ole heggs that nobody wants.’

  ‘I hope they all go rotten,’ my mother said. ‘Now back that cart out of our way this instant!’ And to the children standing on the road she cried out, ‘Jump back into the car! We’re going to the doctor!’

  ‘There’s glass all over the seats!’ they shouted.

  ‘Never mind the glass!’ my mother said. ‘We’ve got to get this boy to the doctor fast!’

  The passengers crawled back into the car. The man with the horse and cart backed off to a safe distance. The ancient sister managed to straighten the vehicle and get it pointed in the right direction, and then at last the once magnificent automobile tottered down the highway and headed for Dr Dunbar’s surgery in Cathedral Road, Cardiff.

  ‘I’ve never driven in a city,’ the ancient and trembling sister announced.

  ‘You are about to do so,’ my mother said. ‘Keep going.’

  Proceeding at no more than four miles an hour all the way, we finally made it to Dr Dunbar’s house. I was hustled out of the car and in through the front door with my mother still holding the bloodstained handkerchief firmly over my wobbling nose.

  ‘Good heavens!’ cried Dr Dunbar. ‘It’s been cut clean off!’

  ‘It hurts,’ I moaned.

  ‘He can’t go round without a nose for the rest of his life!’ the doctor said to my mother.

  ‘It looks as though he may have to,’ my mother said.

  ‘Nonsense!’ the doctor told her. ‘I shall sew it on again.’

  ‘Can you do that?’ my mother asked him.

  ‘I can try,’ he answered. ‘I shall tape it on tight for now and I’ll be up at your house with my assistant within the hour.’

  Huge strips of sticking-plaster were strapped across my face to hold the nose in position. Then I was led back into the car and we crawled the two miles home to Llandaff.

  * * *

  Roald Dahl’s nose took a lot of stick. After nearly being chopped off in the car accident, it was bashed in when his plane crash-landed during the Second World War. After the crash, the surgeon rebuilt his nose in the style of silent-film star Rudolf Valentino.

  * * *

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  Source: BFI Stills

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  About an hour later I found myself lying upon that same nursery table my ancient sister had occupied some months before for her appendix operation. Str