In the UK, childhood is defined by those endless summer holidays

In England, the rhythm is predictable: you break up in mid-July and don't look back until the start of September

However, the summer of Year 11, or the "5th Year" as it was in my day, hit differently

That was the year of O’Levels and CSEs (the predecessors to today’s GCSEs)

The moment the exam period began, you had effectively "left" school; you only surfaced from your freedom to sit the papers

Once the final pen was set down, school was a closed chapter

At the time, I was working weekends in the kitchen at the Royal Oak in Upton Snodsbury

My shifts were spent toggling between the sink and the prep station, plating up starters and bar snacks

It was honest work for the going rate of the era: a solid £1 ($1.30) per hour

I’d been told once that a long summer was the perfect opportunity to master a life skill, juggling, perhaps, or riding a unicycle

I had a different ambition

Even though the legal driving age in the UK is 17, I decided I was going to learn to drive

A local farmer, Mr. Tarren, kindly gave us the run of one of his fields, and all we needed was a vehicle

Enter the 2-door, brown Ford Escort Mk1

It was an MOT failure sold to us by the Royal Oak’s Commis Chef, Sue

Back then, security features were non-existent

In fact, we once played a prank on Sue by "stealing" the car and moving it across the car park, opening the local door and starting the ignition using nothing more than a standard dinner knife from the restaurant

That car represented pure freedom (in the field)

We spent our days testing “firsts”, mostly seeing how fast we could push it across the grass

I think we managed to hit third gear exactly once

As the August heat intensified, the lack of air conditioning became unbearable

Our solution was surgical: we simply cut the roof off and christened it a "convertible."

It was a brilliant, lawless summer of engineering and exploration

By the time September rolled around, I was ready to head off to Worcester Technical College to study Engineering, a path perhaps inevitably inspired by a dinner knife and a roofless Ford