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This is the end , my beautiful friend
“ Get your motor runnin ’, Head out on the highway , Looking for adventure in whatever comes our way ...” The open road , the wind in your hair ... Is life in the fast lane over for Jed Novick ?
“ could make turn it into something interesting ” said My Fine Wife . “ You know , an objet ”. Pause . “ Maybe a plant pot . Apparently when the Berlin Wall fell , they sold off Trabants to garden centres , cut off the roofs and filled them with soil . We could do that ” she said rather too brightly .
I looked at my stationary soft-top . “ We wouldn ’ t even have to cut off the roof ”.
We ’ re looking at my very fine Mercedes CLK 200 . It ’ s , of course , the “ Avantgarde ” model which isn ’ t to say it ’ s experimental , radical , or unorthodox nor is it characterised by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability ( thank you Wikipedia ) but it is very lovely . It ’ s metallic blue with contrasting light leather interior , a top of the range digital sound system . Electric everything . It ’ s also not well . Really not well . OK , it ’ s dead . The car is dead .
“ That ’ ll be your timing chain then ”, said the nice garage bloke . “ You ’ ll need to take it to the Mercedes garage . It ’ s a specialist job .”
He looked at me and we both knew . No one goes to the Mercedes garage . If you can afford to go to the Mercedes garage you can afford to have a car that doesn ’ t need to go to the Mercedes garage . God knows why there even is a Mercedes garage or even what happens there .
“ You ’ ll have to take it away ”, said the nice garage bloke . “ It can ’ t stay here ”.
There ’ s something I find unutterably sad about all this . The Mercedes . It was my car . It was everything that “ practical ” wasn ’ t . A boy car . A soft top that did about three to the gallon – and that wasn ’ t great even in the days when we had gallons . It was a soft top and come on , we get about three days of sunshine here . I used to keep a faux fur coat in the boot because as soon as the sun came out , the roof was down . And as anyone who ’ s been in one of these things , as soon as you take down the roof you let in the cold .“ Cold schmold . It was cool .
“ Roadrunner , roadrunner , Going faster miles an hour , With the radio on I ’ m in love with Massachusetts And the neon when it ’ s cold outside And the highway when it ’ s late at night Got the radio on I ’ m like the roadrunner ”
Jonathan Richman ’ s not ever going to be writing a song about a Nissan Leaf . Chris Martin might .
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My Fine Wife feels no sorrow really . Her favourite words are “ the planet ” and a car that moves from one petrol station to the next , it ’ s not her idea of fun . I can see her point . Having a car , it almost feels a little last century . We live in the centre of town . We walk everywhere and if even we got cabs everywhere … we could get cabs every day and it still wouldn ’ t cover the cost of insuring the Merc . Then there ’ s petrol , nearly £ 1.50 a litre and rising . And , as My Fine Wife reminds me , the planet . Simon Kofe , that Polynesian politician who gave a speech about the impact of climate change standing in the sea , is probably up to his waist by now .
So , yes . I can see her point , but what a joyless , soulless , heartless , miserable point . Have you ever had sugar-free cake ? Where ’ s the joy ? Cars are extraordinary , iconic , beautiful . American Graffiti . Alvis . Bristol . Triumph .
My first car was a Morris 1100 my father bought off Mr Trupp , who lived next door and sold cars on the side . I ’ ve no idea what he did on the other side . Who cares ? Increasingly I can ’ t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday , but I remember the day Truppy – everyone called him Truppy – turned up with the Morris . £ 100 . Deal .
It had clearly been owned by some boy racer type because – and Truppy made a deal about this – it had two Webber carbs . No , me neither , but it went . Really , it went . We could beat almost anything off the lights . But then it stopped , got to about 30mph and stopped . Lost interest . Remembered it was a Morris 100 . “ Perfect , you ’ ll never break the speed limit ” Truppy probably said .
The other thing , the thing he didn ’ t mention , was that while there was a handbrake , it wasn ’ t actually attached to the floor of the car . You pulled it up , it just came up . The handbrake , the plate it was bolted to , some mechanism thing and ... And we lived on quite a steep hill and , well that ’ s how my dark green Morris 1100 came to have a white boot . Do they even have breaker ’ s yards now ?
You think about your cars and they ’ re like photo albums , each one a rush of memory , each one with more stories than miles . But that was then and this is now . And now is different . Now is “ the planet ”.
Maybe it ’ s time to just accept that the future ’ s now and proper cars aren ’ t now . Maybe everything else is a little bit King Canute .
But you know … A couple of weeks ago I got Covid . What can you do ? Just rest up and … Did you know that on Sky Dave Gold or somesuch channel at 4pm every day they ’ re showing old episodes of The Sweeney . Now the Ford Granada Mk 1 , that ’ s a car . And as chance would have it , there ’ s one on the net for £ 4,750 ...