Ask me what I thought about car drivers a few years ago, and I would have said they were horrible selfish people who hated the planet and liked trying to kill cyclists. Fast forward 2 years and you’d have quite a job prying my car keys out of my cold dead hands (if I had died in the struggle to get them off me, but obviously I would win). I am now one of the people that I hated – and I love it.
 
I passed my test on 2nd January 2001, after taking a couple of years of lessons and on my third test. And for a good 5 or 6 years, I didn’t drive again. Then Jon and I decided to go on a camping trip to Ireland and rent a car to get around, so I took about 5 refresher lessons to get me back up to speed – I remember getting back in that car terrified that I wouldn’t remember which pedal was the brake and which was the clutch. But it wasn’t actually that bad, and I got into it again pretty quickly (sure the financial element was a psychological incentive also…). And we ended up having a great time in Ireland, with only a brief meltdown in a multi-story car park in Galway and lots of empty country roads for me to rediscover my driving skills.
 
Then early in 2007, my nan became ill and I was sick and tired of struggling to make it up to London by train on a Sunday – engineering works meant irregular services and rail replacement buses were the norm, and I did not want to pay £20 for the privilege of spending 3 hours changing from train to bus to train to travel 50 miles, and then doing the same to get back. Also, I had just got an allotment at around the same time and was not enjoying the experience of getting on a bus with armfuls of spades and rakes twice a week. So when Jon’s sister said she was going travelling and selling her old banger for a steal, I decided to get my first car. A tiny blue Rover Metro which shook when you went over 60, had 3 and a half gears, and to my dismay no cigarette lighter for me to plug in my iPod transmitter. But I still loved it.
 
Things went wrong however when I took it for an MOT (5 months early, as I had NO idea how these things worked) and they told me that the bottom was about to fall off the car due to corrosion – not really surprising given its age, but still quite sad. So I went on the hunt for a replacement, and Jon’s mum found us a butt ugly green Citröen ZX for a bargainous price. It may have looked like an early 90’s monstrosity, but I soon fell in love with the 5 doors, central locking, power steering and giant boot for all my gardening stuff.
 
And all when great, until after a few months I was driving home from work and there was a thud, a screech and the exhaust fell off, Luckily it didn’t take too much work from the RAC and KwikFit to get a brand new one in, even if it didn’t look quite the same. And apart from the odd little thing – a chip on the windscreen, a dent in the door – she’s still going strong.
 
And much as I try and be environmentally friendly, it would take a hell of a lot to stop me being a car driver again. I love the freedom of being able to go where I want when I want, and not having to check how much cash I have for the bus or what time the last train is, or whether public transport even goes to the middle of nowhere (it probably doesn’t). Plus, I get to sing to my heart’s content, now that I have a lovely cigarette lighter socket to plug in my choons. I do lift share, and don’t make unnecessary short journeys, but there just seems no incentive to use public transport at all any more. Which is another issue for another time…