Monday, 16 May 2011

Here comes success, here comes my car

A few nights ago I dreamed I had a car again. Interestingly (to me at least) in the dream I felt guilty about having the car as I was turning my back on green(er) living. I think I even resolved to drive the car as little as possible and continue to walk and catch buses and trains.

This may be a sneak preview of the future because I doubt we will continue this carlessness for ever. It has been something like 10 weeks since our car packed up and people are beginning to ask questions. Foremost among these questions is ‘when are you (or 'we' in the case of the children) going to get a new car?’ The children are particularly interested in the answer as they are tiring of the inconvenience of walking and bus-catching. But others, who have less of a personal interest in our means of transport, are also keen to have an answer.

I think this has a lot to do with our perceived status in society. We are middle class, middle income and middle aged. We are professionals. We should not be on the bus.

Margaret Thatcher is  said to have said that ‘Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life’, though apparently it was Loelia Ponsonby, one of the wives of the second Duke of Westminster, and /or the poet Brian Howard rather earlier on. Whoever, the desire, or even the right, to acquire was given the official stamp of approval in the 1980s and bus-catching failure sentiment has crept into common shallow perception.  It was perhaps that sentiment that inspired the young men in the fast car to shout out to me and Coco as we stood at the bus stop the other day. Their comments weren’t particularly witty or publishable, but were along the lines of us committing the sin of Onan with/at/on behalf of (it wasn’t made clear) the bus stop.  

So am I, in middle age and standing at a bus stop, a failure? I certainly haven’t made vast amounts of money - in fact, if I had had a student loan it would have been written off by now because my income has never reached the level at which graduates have to start paying them off. And are the friends I have who do not drive and are on low incomes - some of them, shock horror, on benefits - likewise failures? And the people who choose to take the bus because they believe that car driving is bad for their health/the environment? And the people who enjoy the company that public transport can give them? And the people who just don’t really give a damn about what others think?

It all depends on how you define success and failure. The car industry obviously has a vested interest in a definition that equates success with a smart, big car. The advertising industry that spends hours and hours and more money than most of us would dream of on promoting these cars, likewise has a vested interest. The oil industry, the government, engineers, road construction companies, rubber companies…all gain vastly from our car addiction.

On the other hand, the environmental and health implications of the world’s obsession with cars are well documented. And if we trash the planet that we depend on, and while we are at it trash ourselves, just how successful are we?

But it takes a lot to stand up against prevailing opinion, and the opinion of children who really, really don’t want to walk another step.

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