I am carless. I have no car. For probably the first time since I was
16 and 7/8ths and bought my first Mini which I couldn’t drive so just
kept cleaning it until the glorious day of my 17th birthday. Ok, I
drove it a bit, but not very far and quite modestly so as not to
attract unwanted attention, and only when my parents were out, obvs.
We did such things ‘in those days’.

When Rachie left for Berlin she had one final request. (I won’t list
the other pre-final ones, it’ll take me three days). She wanted to
keep her car. Which is a gorgeous little convertible thing. So she
brung it round and dumped it in the driveway. Next to my car. Another
gorgeous convertible thing but bigger. And I’d look at them sitting
there and admire and swoon and… and…

There they’d sit. I reckon I drive 50 miles a week, if that. I travel
by tube, get there by bike and I walk a lot. Mel takes her car to
work, which isn’t very far but its always filled with stuff women fill
cars with. So having two cars between us was always something of a
luxury. Or a habit really, because if you have a car, you have a car.
You don’t stop having them just because you don’t use them at all. Do
you? But having three cars, with two just sitting there waiting to
share 40 miles between them was excessive, even by my standards. Which
are roughly: you can never have too many cars. But three cars between
2 people, one of whom only uses it a bit on weekends? Something had to
give.

So I made the ultimate sacrifice and unloaded my car. And filed the
papers to temporarily adopt Rachie’s. Which I must say is fantastic to
drive and even has a proper gear stick. Probably a clutch somewhere
too but I haven’t found that yet. But its great fun and fast as fuck.

Which brings me back to the present/near future. Ford in America are
taking out a patent on a driverless police car that can spot a
speeding motorist from its hiding place in the trees or behind the
rocks or wherever, and issue a ticket to the vehicle’s computer which
will instantly be displayed on its own ‘heads up’ computer system. Or,
for some offenders, it can, autonomously, give chase. What an empty
car will say to this speeding motorist, when it catches up, I really
don’t know. Unless Robocop gets out and blasts everyone to shit with
its phaser-blaster-destruction-ray-thingumies. (Patent not pending on
that one; we should get in there).

And I hate anything that tries to stop me driving too fast. Its my
human right. Sort of. Don’t they realise that if cars moved faster
there’d be less clogging up on the roads? What a pleasure it would be
to have the outside lanes filled with cars actually moving at or above
the speed limit.

Oh well,

happy Tuesday and hey, hey, hey; let’s be careful out there

A xxxx