Driven to distraction

A Car

In a perfect world I wouldn't need a car.  Public transportation would get me wherever I needed, and at an affordable cost.  But that’s simply not the case.

I briefly had to commute from Bolton, where I lived at the time, in to Manchester where I worked.  It was hard to understand why the train system could claim to be short of money travelling at these peak times.

Stuffed in to carriages like victims escaping an atrocity (and Bolton isn't really that bad!), with guards at the entrance to the station to ensure nobody got through without a ticket.  They couldn't complain about the lack of numbers.

What was more annoying was that I was paying significantly more for a ticket than I would have done for fuel.  Yes, in my car I would have spent a lot of time queuing in traffic, but on the train I was given an experience that makes you feel jealous of veal.  When you add on the fact that the car took me door to door whilst with the train I had to also walk 20 minutes as part of my commute in all weathers, the ticket price was definitely not representing value for money.

Aside from the commute to work, the real reason I chose to drive a number of years ago was for comedy.  Any kind of career in stand up is virtually impossible without a car now.  There are a minority of pro acts who don’t drive, but these are pretty much all people who got established a number of years ago when the circuit was somewhat smaller to say the least.

 

Another car

Without a doubt though, one of the most stress making aspects of my career is to do with cars.  Fuel costs, repairs, the lot.  There’s nothing like driving along without a care in the world only for the oil light to come on followed by the car uncontrollably going up to maximum revs whilst huge clouds of smoke pour out of your exhaust pipe.

That example was at the end of last year and meant my turbo needed replacing at a cost of over £400!  Sometimes the costs can rack up that much that I feel that my existence is solely to earn money to continually fuel and maintain a car.

I’ve not had a lot of luck with cars.  I managed to write off the first car I owned for a start.  Whilst parking.  In my own car park!

Sounds stupid, and it was.  I just whizzed in too quick like the fearless boy racer moron I was.  Realising I was going too fast I went to slam on my brakes but my foot slipped on to the accelerator.  I was only to achieve a few feet of acceleration before hitting a wall, but that was enough to crumple up my bonnet.

As horrible as it was, I can’t really complain.  Friends had some sympathy at first thinking it was a low level perimeter wall I hadn't seen.  When they found out it was in fact a three story block of flats, their sympathy evaporated.  Needless to say, I couldn't really miss it.

If I learnt one lesson from that, aside from the obvious one about avoiding stationary... buildings, it was that if no-one else is involved, DO NOT claim on the insurance.

The car I wrote off was an old Punto, and after taking in to account my excess the insurance company paid out just £500.  Needless to say, they’ve taken many more times that amount of money from me over the years through increased premiums.  At its worst, I had pay an annual premium of £1600!

Over the last 5 years I’ve managed to stay clear of accidents, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that meant I could stay trouble free when it came to cars.  No, instead, the cars themselves would cause their own problems.

I had three Vauxhall’s in a row that all had some weird intermittent fault wrong with them.  Intermittent means that when the fault occurs you can’t drive the damn thing, but when a mechanic comes to look at it they can’t find a problem.  So there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Yet another... oh no, wait, that's an owl on a skateboard

Call me old fashioned, but I just want a car that works.  Simple.

So I made the leap, and spent real money on a car.  Part exchanged my pointless car in return, and drove off a Skoda Fabia that’s only three years old.  On paper, this should mean I have a dependable car that won’t cause me trouble but what it also means is that if this one causes me grief I am significantly out of pocket.

Fingers crossed it does work, otherwise I’m back on the trains again!