Mirror, signal, manoeuvre.
The time has come for me to start growing my own little carbon footprint to add to the stampede of tracks conspiring to turn our bundle of rock, water and gas into a sweaty armpit of a planet.
I need to buy a car.
We’ve run out of space in the office where I work, to the point that we could only squeeze more people in if we divided a floor horizontally in two and solely employed dwarves. So it looks like a move is in order, and it’s unlikely to be within the 15-minute walk I currently enjoy.
Plus, while I’ve managed to get away without a car up till now, I’m now playing badminton twice a week at halls a fair distance from my home, and it’s also probably time I stopped relying on friends to taxi me around the country.
The thing is, though, since I passed my test over ten years ago, I haven’t driven at all. Unless you count Grand Theft Auto, but I’m pretty sure that mounting the kerb at 93mph, scattering pedestrians like bowling pins and then somersaulting into a taxi hasn’t yet been added to the Highway Code.
Unfortunately, since life doesn’t have save-game points to cater for bad driving, this means that all the money I saved in the past by not owning a car is now being used to pay for refresher lessons. And I now feel like I’m seventeen again, which in normal circumstances would be pleasant but in this case serves only to remind me how much about driving I’ve forgotten. My first session demonstrated that my driving is as rusty as I imagine the car in which I first learned is now. That mirror, signal, manoeuvre mantra is now repeating itself in my sleep.
Once all this is over, I’ll be in the enviable position of being to sink a significant proportion of my earnings into a tin box with wheels for the main purpose of transporting me to the place where I earn that very money. It’s all a bit cyclical really.