Driving Me Wild

It’s finally happened. Sound the fanfare. Twenty years after passing my driving test, I’ve got around to buying a car. Until now it has never quite seemed the right moment. Once I’d obtained my license my dad recklessly allowed me to drive his car and was repaid with a broken headlight and dented bumper not long after. At university we all just walked or cycled; it was a rare student indeed who owned a car in those bygone days. A gap year included driving all around the UK on a kind of roadshow, but in someone else’s vehicle. Then I was lured to the capital with a job offer from a small British technology company called Psion and lived a happy car-free existence there for the ensuing fourteen years. London’s much maligned transport system served me well enough to put out of mind any thoughts of spending my hard-earned cash on a set of wheels. For the last year at Pilsdon I’ve had the use of a community car whenever I’ve needed one.

Cars do, I realise, have a habit of emitting a noxious cocktail of invisible gases from their behinds whenever transporting their human masters from point A to point B, like flatulent camels only much more dangerous. One of these gases, carbon dioxide, is helping to heat the Earth beyond safe levels and generally mess with its climatic control systems. Others merely poison the local air that pedestrians like to breathe. Manufacturers like to boast that they are improving these fumes all the time but the fact remains that unless you are one of the few with an electric car (hydrogen cars still being the stuff of Wired magazine) your automobile is a silent killer. Even LPG-converted cars still release methane, a more damaging greenhouse gas than CO2.

Nevertheless I wrestled with and pinned down my conscience and last Sunday paid £2900 for a lipstick-red twelve-year-old Suzuki Jimny. Another half a grand to the insurance mafia, two hundred odd quid to the government for a paper circle, and nearly fifty pounds to fill the tank, and I was able to drive it away. My conscience heavier but my wallet significantly lighter.

Ironically enough the reason for this surge in my carbon shoe-size is a desire to live a simpler, greener life on a plot of land in mid Wales, which happens to be located twelve miles from the nearest town, Machynlleth. I do plan to use the rather infrequent bus service whenever possible but there will be times when I will need to collect stuff too bulky to carry. The vehicle had to have a four wheel drive capability to ensure I could get it up the very steep exit in all weathers. Also of course I need a car to tow my caravan onto the site.

My caravan. Oh yes, this has been an expensive week. I have put a downpayment on a smart-looking 1997-model Abbey Iona which is being tarted up by the dealership at this very moment. It’s a svelte 6 foot 6 inches wide and just 12 foot long, but packed with everything a prospective hermit might want. Kitchen, dining table, double bed, shower, toilet, inbuilt radio, awning, 110Ah battery...  It’s costing me about the same as the Suzuki, but I’ll be looking to buy a few extras such as gas bottles and solar panels because try as I might, I’m just not a fan of having cold showers in the dark.  

A couple of steps closer to living the off-grid dream.