THE TALES OF THE LION QUEST

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[Peugeot 504]  Ned

By Terry Moyle - Taumaranui (finalist)

We lived on a small rural block just out of town. My wife, four sons and I were highly mobile, with a Corolla, Peugeot 403, a 404, 504 and my pride and joy, a Peugeot 504 of later vintage than the other.

Animals on the farm let were goats and sheep. In our first year an orphaned lamb became a bottle fed family pet. The boys called him Ned. Ned loved being driven to the local dairy for an ice cream. It did not take him long to associate Peugeots with ice creams. If he saw an open door he was in, no doubt with thoughts of "hokey pokey or raspberry ripple?" crossing his mind.

Sometimes he made the wrong choice in cars. On one occasion he had rummaged in a shed looking for sheep nuts to eat. He inadvertently put his foot in an open can of green paint. He then climbed into my wife's Corolla, green feet and all.

One day I drove my 504 up our steep road and as I came to the flat area near the house I saw Ned disappearing into the shed that housed the sheep nuts. I quickly stopped the car, dashed into the shed and chased Ned out. I reorganized the spilled bag and came out to find my 504 had vanished.

In my haste I had left the car out of gear with the handbrake off. Ned, thinking it was ice cream time, got in, causing the car to run backwards down the steep drive, over a bank and onto two tree stumps. The car was a mess. The stumps had raised the rear floor wells on both sides about nine inches. Mechanic friends told me to sell it as transmission, alignment, rear end and the rest would be wrecked.

I didn't sell. The 504 was panel beaten back to mint condition. This all happened 18 years ago. Ned, sadly, is gone now, but I still have the 504, now with 353,,000 miles on the clock. I have a 306 turbo diesel, but that 504 is still my pride and joy.

If you were driving through the King Country around 20 years ago and recall seeing a sheep sitting in a car eating an ice cream, don't worry, it was not a hallucination. It was Ned.

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