Why I Don't Need A Car

and

Why I Would Like To Have a Car

I was brave, and a little impulsive, and independent to a fault, and bought a car. A fairly cheap 12-year old car that only lasted 6 weeks before it was to dangerous to drive and too expensive to fix. I sold it on for much less than I paid and felt quite stupid for a while.

I was quite sad. More sad than is reasonably-attributed to an inanimate thing, but I was nonetheless.

I bought this car, but it looked a bit worse-for-wear than in this ancient photo.

This is a blog post about how things have to be different without a car, and about how the world (at least the bits of it I move around in) seems to require a critical mass of car-ownership, and about how public transport in Scotland is somewhere between mediocre and downright sucky.

The events of which I tell happened roughly three weeks ago, maybe four. 

There was a warning light, which made me a bit scared but may have been nothing. Then there was a string smell of petrol, which was the evidence of a nice rusty fuel tank hole, and an exhaust hole. Fixable but unjustifiably pricey, given the degree of rust where structural things ought to have been.

I declared the car to have driven its last on the Friday. It my have been a 13th, but I tend not to buy in to that particular brand of BS. My late Grandmother was particularly fond of the number 13.

 At that point what I had planned for that weekend was:
Saturday - drive myself, Flatmate and two friends out to a fairly out-of-the-way part of Aberdeenshire, have dinner in the pub, and then go to a free ceilidh where I had been asked to call a few more unusual dances. Then we planned to stay with friends in the area, meaning we would need to drive to their place at the end of the ceilidh.
Sunday - drive the four of us back to Aberdeen, whereupon I take one person home and drive the remaining three of us to the hire car place, Flatmate would pick up a hire car and we would together go meet a further seven people for another trip. Then, as the plan went, with 5 people in my car, and 5 in the hire car, we would go for an adventure to the Castle Ceilidh in St Andrews, and then back again potentially very late at night.

Tell me this isn't worth travelling to. Sunshine, outsides, people, ruins, dancing. And then there's fire and heights. 

So losing my wheels made my day a little less brighter - I did not want to let these guys down. Now at this point I had it in my head that there were no hire companies in Aberdeen that I could use, due to not being old enough for most of them, and thinking that I hadn't had my license long enough for another. Out of the eleven people involved in the weekend's travel plans, only Flatmate and I had driving licenses. We tried and tried to come up with various plan Bs. One plan involved Flatmate changing her hire car for a 9-seater hire monster, the biggest they'll give out on an ordinary license, and me staying home and missing the fun. This plan added to the upset, for I'm a sensitive soul who doesn't like to miss out on the fun.

In the end we discovered that the magical event of my most recent birthday qualified me to be able to hire a car (from one company only, but they're quite reasonable). And we had 48 hours of unplanned car hire, half of which was covered by other people. In the end, the world kept turning.

Since then I have bought myself a bicycle. 

This bicycle.

This is my personal condolence. It cost me £46 off ebay, and may even make it to me by the end of the month. I already cycle to work every day, and to a lot of other things. I do it on a donated bike (thanks, Mr T!) which mostly works fine, and I quite like. But I've never bought a bike for myself.

This is an old bike, but pretty funky. It will no doubt be a "project". But bikes are things I can mend and rebuild, and they don't need petrol or MOTs or insurance or road tax or any of that necessary car nonsense. A good part of me hopes that getting an old bike back to being a thing of beauty will go some way to soothing my bruised ego, bashed about by the inability to fix mechanical car-problems.

A bike, however cannot do some things. 

I can't give lifts. This is the biggest sad. I am heavily conscious of my universal lift-debt. I was making inroads into paying it back. With interest. My time will come.

Although I nearly bought this, so that I could.

I can't travel the length of the country in a day.

It doesn't keep the rain out.

It doesn't play any of my new tape collection.

It doesn't have enough capacity for the tent, stove, sleeping bag, and candle-chandelier (next post).

And it runs on energy. Precious people-calorie-energy. Driving made me less tired.


On hearing my tragic first-world-problem news, my dear Mother phoned, and offered me a friendly loan so I could buy another car, maybe one a bit less cheap and likely to run for a while.

My Mum decided that I needed a car. So I don't. 

In a childish (yet planet and pocket-friendly) knee-jerk reaction, I have decided that I do not need a car. I will get by.

My plan is to save for yet another thing, and look at a set of wheels in September. In the meantime I shall blog about what I might be looking for.

For now it'll be transport by the following means:

-Bike. Calf muscles for me then.
-Bus. I spent 50 minutes waiting for the most recent bus I had to get (last week).
-Swallowing my pride and asking for lifts. I have some generous friends who I shall repay in some form one day. If you have ever given me a lift, and I haven't cooked you dinner recently, invite yourself round. Do It!
-24 hour hire car deals for big things. Like the camping trip we had 2 weeks ago. And the one we're planning next weekend.

I am the disproportionately-proud owner of half of this tent, and all of the magical candle chandelier that goes inside it. 

So, I don't have a car. I'm not going to have one. But only for a while to prove my Mum wrong. And then I'll write a list of why I think having one will be a good thing,, suck up to Mum and have another bash at it.

Till then, I'm thumbing a ride...