Driving in my Car

I think that I’ve mentioned before that I like cars but I know virtually nothing about them. Driving is still fun although I don’t go out driving for driving’s sake like I used to in the months after I passed my driving test. In those days a friend introduced me to a game where we would pick a colour and follow the next car of that colour for nine minutes, wherever it went. These days this would be considered stalking and even then it was frowned upon, particularly when I followed one such target into his own driveway.

These days driving a car is all about taking me from A to B as quickly as possible. I watch Top Gear on the TV but this really tells me nothing about cars. Yes, I can marvel at a Bugatti Veyron and wish that I owned one but in the real world it would be like me trying to open a can of baked beans with a pneumatic drill, it’s the wrong tool for the job. 

What would be more frustrating than sat in a Veyron, knowing that with a slight tap of the accelerator I could be launched on to the moon, when in fact I’m most likely going to be sat behind a tractor crawling along the A15 at 20mph? Despite the Veyron’s top speed of 253mph I won’t even be able to overtake as there’ll be too much traffic skulking behind another tractor coming in the opposite direction.

Did you know that tractors don’t have to have any road tax because they’re primarily off–road vehicles? I often ponder that peculiarity of the law when I’m slowly trundling along in a queue of traffic behind Farmer Barley Mow on his way home, and note that he could be making use of the empty fields either side of the road rather than holding up a mile of traffic. This is a pet hate of mine so don’t get me started.

I am left therefore with the choice of a normal run-of-the mill road car that’s efficient but has a little bit of poke to alarm the present Mrs Hayward with on the motorway, but not enough to have me pursued down the A1(M) by screaming squad cars. 

I do like an unusual looking car though. I put this down to the fact that the earliest car I remember my parents having was a Morris Traveller. Whoever thought of adding a large proportion of wood to the outer shell of the car was a genius and a madman in equal parts. It looked less like a car and more like a sideboard but as a small child I was fascinated with it. 

I convinced myself that when I was old enough to drive I too would have a funny looking car. As it was the first car I drove after passing my test was a beige Austin Maestro that you could only crank into fifth gear when the moon was in alignment with Neptune. It wasn’t funny looking, it just wasn’t very good but it got me about.

Now I drive a Vauxhall Astra. Not the most exciting or attractive car in the world but not the worst looking either. Most road cars blend into one amorphous mechanical blob to me but the Astra has that nice silver band across its rear that I quite like for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, I covet the Honda Civic, the new one with an interior like a spaceship, and in comparison the Astra is a cheap boiled sweet, charming but boring, whereas the Civic is the Malteser sweet out of a tin of Celebrations, all shiny and exciting and full of chocolately naughtiness.

I don’t know what it is about discussing cars that forces an individual into spouting clichés like they’ve been possessed by the agitated spirit of Jeremy Clarkson but I note that it’s happened to me here and I shall ride that wave until I crash face first on the jagged rock of unoriginality.

In the end it doesn’t matter. I’ll probably go and choose another Vauxhall next time because the people at the service centre are quite nice. Not that I intend to be visiting them that often but if something goes wrong I have no idea what to do. What goes on under the bonnet is a mystery to me. I’ve heard of the carburettor and the head gasket but I don’t really know what they are. I’m not bothered by this. People ride horses but I suspect that very few know how its respiratory system works. They just like riding them.

So that’s really where I came in. I have explained in a convoluted way that I like cars but I don’t understand them, and that I don’t like tractors. 

Mind you, give me a tractor and I’ll show you how it should be driven, at speed and in a field with ‘go faster’ stripes down the side. Tractor Drag Racing anyone?