Memory lame

My grandpa taught me never to look back. Don’t cry over spilt beer, he used to say (he was an Aussie, brought up in the bush).

A blunt talking man, he once caught me grieving over the family dog, which had recently died. ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead. Crying isn’t going to bring the mutt back.’ (Country Australians have a more earthy relationship with their hounds than dog-doting Brits, of which I am now hopelessly and sentimentally one. In the Outback, when your old dog is ill you don’t take it to the vet. You take it outside and shoot it.)

I thought of my grandpa at the recent Geneva Motor Show. Yet another great old name from the car Hall of Fame had been exhumed and made all shiny and 21C. Fifty-two years since the first one, there’s a new Renault 5.