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Lambretta scooters were so cool in rockin’ 1950s
In the rock ‘n roll days of the 50s, the coolest transport in town was a Lambretta scooter. One devotee was freelance photographer Pat Laurie, of Derby, who travelled hundreds of miles on her treasured machine – as Pat Parkin reports.
For she arrived phut-phutting up their sweeping drives on her treasured Lambretta scooter, with lighting equipment, cameras and the rest of her apparatus strapped on the back.
“The parents were somewhat surprised,” laughed Pat, “but the scooter got me off to a good start with the children.”
Like other Bygones’ readers, she was an addict of the Lambretta – don’t use the word Vespa in her hearing – and had her first in 1956.
“I had seen them when I was in Italy. I loved them and thought ‘I am going to have one of those’, so I did. They were such fun and quite eye-turners.
“My first trip was up the M6 which was very exciting and, yes, in those days, engines of their capacity were allowed. At that time, I was a freelance photographer doing a variety of jobs but mainly going to people’s homes to photograph their children.”
An engineer friend had made a special fitting for the scooter so that she could tip up the pillion seat and fit a huge box to take all her equipment on the back.
She was a freelance working for herself for 20 years from her family’s home in Osmaston Road, Derby, using her father’s darkroom – where he had once developed x-rays – to print her work.
Dr Alan Laurie was a highly respected medic with a countrywide reputation for his work in x-rays. It was he and a colleague who set up the School of Radiography at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary.
“I always used to say he took photos of people’s insides and I did the outsides,” she laughed.
Pat later joined the staff of W W Winter, the well-known photographers in Midland Road, Derby. As well as using her scooter for work, it used to take her everywhere, even the 208 miles on her annual holiday to Aldeburgh, in Suffolk.
“It was a long way but, thanks to my Lambretta, I enjoyed a very interesting journey across East Anglia. You see so much more in the open air.”
Windy days could sometimes be tricky, however, as the roads were usually high above the drained fen lands and the box on the back sometimes used to catch the wind.
A keen golfer, Pat recalls the time when her scooter took her and a friend and two sets of clubs to play in a competition at Kedleston Park Golf Club.
“I had three Lambrettas altogether, over 25 years, both 125ccs and 150ccs, and really missed the adventure of scootering when I acquired a car – though probably not on rainy days.”
Pat, who lives in Derby, celebrates her 80th birthday on Monday.
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