![]() She would use more public transport and taxis if she had to. Given how unsafe London is for women, especially after dark, I thought giving up the Polo would be hard for her. I was surprised that my partner (now wife) agreed to the idea. So I did, like a suspended American cop handing in his badge and gun It was as if the universe was saying: go to the car pound and turn in your keys. Margaret Thatcher is supposed to have said: “If a man finds himself a passenger on a bus having attained the age of 26, he can count himself a failure in life.” I was nearly double that age, at a time of life when I should have been sublimating my fear of death with a manual Maserati, rather than topping up my Oyster card or riding my bike. ![]() I would never have to wash the car again.īut without a car, would I really be a man? “A man ain’t a man with a ticket in his hand,” counselled the mod revival band the Merton Parkas, in their 1979 hit You Need Wheels. In my own little way, I felt I was doing my bit for the environment: kids in pushchairs at exhaust-pipe level were, thanks to me, slightly less likely to have asthma. If I had kept the Polo, today I would be paying out £135 a year to park a rotting lump of metal outside my house, not to mention £400-plus on insurance, and £200 for vehicle tax, as well as ludicrous sums on petrol, repair bills, MOTs and congestion charges. ![]() Similarly, I could ditch the motor, and thereby change my life and bank balance. In Nicolas Poussin’s painting Landscape with Diogenes, the philosopher is watching a boy cup a hand to drink water from a pond and realises he doesn’t need his drinking bowl, his last possession (off-the-shoulder toga notwithstanding), and so he throws it away. I could leave the car in the pound, along with the car mats bearing the registration number, which my brother-in-law had bought me. “It’s not going anywhere.”ĭuring that phone call, I had an epiphany. ![]() “Can I ring you back? I just need to talk to my partner,” I asked. But there’s no shame in it.” Absolutely, but that wasn’t the issue. He clearly thought I might have difficulty coming up with £250 because he added kindly: “A lot of people find that a challenging sum. A fter our rustbucket of a VW Polo was towed away from outside Marks & Spencer, I rang the car pound to ask how much it would cost to get it out. ![]()
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