Here in my car
There's a gap in the driveway that shouldn't be there.
I took my little red Micra to the local Nissan dealer this lunchtime to deliver it up to the governments much touted scrappage scheme.
It's a funny thing to own a car for over 10 years. I have owned it for longer than I lived in my last house. You get used to all the little idiosyncrasies and eventually reach a point where the car is ...I dunno...completely comfortable? It becomes part of you. Now it's gone, I find I'm missing it.
I'm not a car person. Never have been. It's just a thing to take me from A to B. I never understood why people salivate over the latest model. It never computed. I liked my car because it just worked. It was reliable, easy to drive and park. It didn't get in the way of my life. It just did what it said on the tin.
I can't complain. Keeping it for that long means that I had ridiculously good total cost of ownership. I feel a bit guilty about it being scrapped. The basic mechanical bits are still fine, trivial things has stopped working recently, but the only reason I was getting rid of it was because the welding and other stuff to get it through the next MOT finally exceeded the value of the vehicle. It made no sense to keep it any longer.
And yet...
In a few days it will become a little cube of crushed metal and plastic and I will take delivery of a nice shiny new Diesel Micra. They look different, but still drive the same. I'll comfort myself with the thought that the fuel consumption is far better. But it wont be the same. Those little red Micras are everywhere when you look for them. I'll keep seeing them on the road and checking for a familiar license plate that no longer exists.
Perhaps I'm grieving. Can you do that for a machine?
I took my little red Micra to the local Nissan dealer this lunchtime to deliver it up to the governments much touted scrappage scheme.
It's a funny thing to own a car for over 10 years. I have owned it for longer than I lived in my last house. You get used to all the little idiosyncrasies and eventually reach a point where the car is ...I dunno...completely comfortable? It becomes part of you. Now it's gone, I find I'm missing it.
I'm not a car person. Never have been. It's just a thing to take me from A to B. I never understood why people salivate over the latest model. It never computed. I liked my car because it just worked. It was reliable, easy to drive and park. It didn't get in the way of my life. It just did what it said on the tin.
I can't complain. Keeping it for that long means that I had ridiculously good total cost of ownership. I feel a bit guilty about it being scrapped. The basic mechanical bits are still fine, trivial things has stopped working recently, but the only reason I was getting rid of it was because the welding and other stuff to get it through the next MOT finally exceeded the value of the vehicle. It made no sense to keep it any longer.
And yet...
In a few days it will become a little cube of crushed metal and plastic and I will take delivery of a nice shiny new Diesel Micra. They look different, but still drive the same. I'll comfort myself with the thought that the fuel consumption is far better. But it wont be the same. Those little red Micras are everywhere when you look for them. I'll keep seeing them on the road and checking for a familiar license plate that no longer exists.
Perhaps I'm grieving. Can you do that for a machine?