While the year 2022 was, of course, the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Austin Seven - was there, perhaps, another 100th anniversary of the car in 2023?
Christmas is a time for family gatherings when driving home is the order of the day so, might the Christmas of 1923 have been the first occasion when an Austin Seven owner did this? But, you ask, could this have happened in 1922 as well? No, for production of the Seven did not start until November of that year and deliveries began only in early 1923.
So, let us imagine a scene in late December 1923 when a certain Miss Martha Matilda Flint might have been one of the first to complete this task. Tilly (as she was always known) worked at the Sheffield-based Brown Firth Research Laboratories as secretary and personal assistant to the renowned metallurgist Dr. William Herbert Hatfield.
Dr. Hatfield, with Miss Flint accompanying him, had visited Herbert Austin on several occasions to offer advice about the grades of steel and other metals suitable for use in his factory - and especially for the soon-to-be-introduced 'Seven'.
Miss Flint, convinced by both the Austin Company's copious advertising of how suitable the Seven was for the lady driver - and from inside knowledge of the quality of the car's mechanical components - had purchased on the never-never (and with some help from her father in Derby) a new example from George Kenning's Sheffield showroom. 
And so, on Monday the 24th of December 1923 with snow beginning to fall and having been allowed to leave work at 4 pm - rather earlier than usual - she stopped first to top up the fuel tank and then called at 244 Ecclesall Road, her digs during the week. She loaded her presents, a selection of heavily discounted Firth-Brearley stainless steel cutlery and then, having been assured by young Norman - a mechanically-minded son of the house that her battery was fully charged, set off, just after six o'clock, into the darkness.
With over 40 miles to her parent's house to the south of Derby, and with the snow showers increasing in frequency, she must have been a little nervous. Even her familiarity with the regular weekend route she took through Dronfield, Chesterfield, Clay Cross, Alfreton, and Ripley was of little help. Things looked so different at night with the infrequency of the towns' gas street lamps and their soft, parchment coloured light - and the countryside between a blacked-out wilderness. Eventually, with the hand-operated windscreen wiper - an accessory suggested by the salesman - unable to cope, Tilly resorted to pivoting open the top section of the screen and peering through the tiny gap so created. Fortunately, improved immeasurably by reflections from the snow, the feeble output of the headlamps proved to be no great disadvantage And so she motored on, shivering in the cold, at a steady 20 to 25 m.p.h. the narrow, beaded-edge tyres cutting through the snow to the road surface beneath. Occasionally, she found herself having to thread her way through deeper snow, and was careful, of course, not to let the car drift too much from its proper track…..
Perhaps, towards the end of her journey and looking forward to dinner and the open coal fire that would greet her in the parlour at home, she was glad that she'd dismissed Dr. Hatfield's suggested that she take the 5.25 pm Derby train from the Midland Station. This had been a far more engaging adventure - and one that proved her choice of little car had been correct.
Fortunately for Miss Flint, the worst of the bad weather that Christmas began on the following day when mild air from the Atlantic moved in to bring a widespread frontal snowfall, a real white Christmas for most of England and the heaviest since 1890. By Boxing Day the skies had cleared and so, taking this opportunity, Tilly allowed her father a drive in the car - hood down (she was an outdoor type) - and then posed with him outside the family home for a photograph.
On one of Tilly's visits to the Austin works at Longbridge, while taking lunch in the staff canteen (Dr. Hatfield of course was being entertained in the directors' dining room) she had encountered a rather engaging, clever and well-spoken young man, Trevor, who worked in the publicity department. He's spotted her turning over the cutlery and examining it in great detail; curious to know why she was doing this (and taken by her comely appearance) he introduced himself and asked her why. She explained that she worked in Sheffield, where cutlery was an important industry, and always been intrigued when socialising with work colleges that - without exception - they always checked the cutlery to discover its origin and she'd caught the habit. As a result of the knife-and-fork meeting the couple had, over the next 18 months, formed a mutual attraction, exchanged numerous letters and met on several occasions.
It was therefore with some excitement that she sat down at home to write and tell Trevor of her successful nocturnal adventure, through the snow, in her Austin Seven, and explained how well it had performed. Intrigued by the letter and its possibility for publicity, he showed it to his head of department who commented, "Driving home for Christmas, that sounds like a good title for a song, somebody ought to write one. Let's see what we can do with this, I know, make up a Light Car and Cyclecar front cover and we'll see how it looks."
Sadly, Trevor's splendid efforts were in vain for, outbid by Ford for next year's Christmas edition, the cover, reproduced below, was put to one side and forgotten. And what of Tilly and Trevor and how their relationship developed and future together? Log in next Christmas day to find out..