Public Image

Today I cleared out the car ready for the scrap yard. This was quite a poignant occasion. Unlike many people, I do not get particularly attached to cars, as I view them as just a means of getting (unhealthily) from A to B. No, I invest nothing in them emotionally. Think again (and stop sounding so smug). As I went through the mess of sweet wrappers and car park tickets, I found some interesting pickings. Apart from CDs and enough change for a bus ride, I found all manner of mementos of family life - a shoe; pop corn from Lexy’s birthday treat with her two best friends who both live far away now; wellington boots; a train ticket from when E and I went to see Hamlet with Rory Kinnear in it (it’s back at the Lyttelton Theatre in April, see it if you can); a stone which had both fossils in it and some chocolate stuck to it; the toy crocodile that Coco bought me at the school fair and who used to sit on the dashboard in a stand probably intended for a Sat Nav; briefly, a cat. Clearly our car was a little home from home, an extension of us as a family (messy but friendly is the message I think it gives out). 

So in this way are we so different from those with powerful give-it-some-throttle-boys cars with model names like ‘Thrust’, or cheeky little numbers called ‘Party Time’, or ‘Independent Ms’? People who are attracted to cars because of their image - or so the multi-million pound advertising industry would lead us to think. Unwittingly perhaps, we had owned the epitome of the family car, a big clunky thing that chuntered along filled with the haphazard debris of family life. It wasn’t sexy but I bet you could ad campaign out of it - large but cosy, able to take the family away while making them feel at home. Only, it isn’t able to take the family anywhere as it is dead and far too expensive to resurrect, which is what the ads don’t tell you.

There were a few other bits and pieces that I removed from the car. These included my parking permit for work (my colleagues are celebrating the demise of my tank as there is now far more space in the car park), the tax disc and a box of Tetra paks to recycle. These last two gave me cause to rant. I decided to cash in my tax disc by telephoning the DVLA. Tell me, DO THEY NOT HAVE HUMAN BEINGS WORKING AT THAT PLACE? Is it reasonable to spend 10 minutes on the phone and not speak to a single person, particularly when pressing ‘3’ or ‘9’ or whatever, has taken you up some dead end? I know I can cancel it on line. I should have done that in the first place, but for some reason I felt the need to pick up the phone. Never again.

Also, what the heck am I going to do with all these Tetra paks that I was going to recycle? I usually take them, and the cardboard, to the car park near work. Last time I tried, the Tetra pak recycling bin was full so I left them in the car. Now, how am I going to recycle them and the cardboard? We have some roadside recycling but not much. I notice that further down the hill more is collected - food waste for instance - and nip over the boundary into the next county and whole wheelie bin loads are taken instead of a few poxy boxes. But up here in the cold of the hills where I live (ie about a mile further on) we are expected to go green by getting in our cars and driving to the recycling centres. Sense? I think not.

And don’t suggest I take a bin liner of recycling with me on the bus. I’m not that eccentric.