🜂 EDGE CULT FUNDAMENTALS: When the Alarm Bells Are Lying

Back in 1990, I needed a new motor.

“New” is generous.
What I really needed was something that moved, ideally for £200, with AA membership doing most of the heavy lifting. The AA lads knew me well enough by then that they’d started asking if I fancied a brew when they turned up.

The last car had given up the ghost completely.
A Ford Escort. I think. It had stopped being a car and become more of a philosophical statement.

So I did what you did in those days.
I picked up Loot.

For anyone too young to remember: Loot was Exchange & Mart’s dodgier London cousin. Cars, bedsits, “genuine Rolexes”, and opportunities to make questionable life decisions.

There it was.

Austin Allegro.
South of the river.
£200.

Perfect.

I was living in North Tottenham at the time. So I got the tube down to Southwark, and met the two chaps selling it.

They looked exactly like you’d expect.

Proper London blaggers.
Hard faces.
Joking, circling each other verbally like boxers on a Friday night in the East End.
Every sentence set off another internal klaxon.

They said all the wrong things.

“Forgot the logbook, mate — stick it in the post tomorrow.”
Test drive? One of them insisted on driving.
Radio turned up loud enough to drown out what I was certain must be catastrophic mechanical failure.