Driving a bargain

It’s a full four months this week since I quit. And to date the experience has been so easy that I’m just annoyed I didn’t break the unhealthy habit years ago. Yes, there have been occasional cravings, moments when I had to have one now.

But recently I joined a club called GoCar, which rents them out by the hour. It works a bit like nicotine patches. Whenever the urge strikes, I make an online booking and head for the nearest “base station”. Then I drive around for 60 minutes or so. That’s usually enough.

I didn’t give up car ownership deliberately, as readers may recall. It happened by accident, starting in June, when my 10-year-old Avensis blew its engine. After I had it towed home, there was a big decision to make – new engine or new car?

But in the meantime the weather was good, the children were off school, and the expanded Dublin bike scheme had just reached the bottom of our road. Also, by a portentous coincidence, my motor tax – punitive because of the car’s antiquity – was due for renewal.

Then I heard about GoCar and, in a rough calculation, worked out I could have 40 or 50 short trips for the cost of the renewed tax alone. In the meantime, September came and the schools returned. But the weather was still balmy.

When I had to make a couple of long-distance journeys, I resorted to conventional car-hire. And that too cost only a fraction of what continued ownership would.

So my old Toyota has slipped quietly into retirement. It’s still where it was, gathering cobwebs. A final decision about its future is no more urgent than before. And anyway, it’s complicated by the fact that, for several years now, the car has also functioned as a spare room.

From the glove compartment to the boot, via the underside of seats, it contains a large collection of that special category of domestic property – things that are important enough to keep, but not to have in the house. That’s why I can’t sell the car in the short-term. I’d have to clean it out first.

I suppose I do miss driving it on occasion, although not primarily as a means of transport. A car is a great place to listen to music, for example. And sometimes the journey is entirely incidental.

When my children were small and refused to sleep, the last resort often was to strap them into toddler seats and go for a drive. The hum of the engine always did the trick. If we went out the M4, they were usually asleep by Lucan. Then, destination achieved, I could turn around. As long as I avoided sudden movements while lifting them out, they’d be down for the night.

The older two are teenagers now – more sleep resistant than ever, and beyond the reach of such remedies. If the car were still available as a getaway, it would sometimes be them I’d be escaping from. In fact, immobile as it is, it could do the job. Once or twice recently, I’ve been tempted to sleep in it.

It’s the same teenagers, typically, that precipitate the short-term rentals. When you’re used to having a car, and now don’t, you can feel like a bad parent on these dark, wintry mornings when your beloved child falls out of bed, worn out from being on Facebook half the night, and overwhelmed by the logistics of organising a school uniform, never mind a two-bus journey to school.

At times like this I find myself checking if the local share-car is free. And it usually is. So much so, indeed, that I worry about the scheme’s viability.

Once recently, I found the car exactly where I’d parked it a couple of days previously, tuned to the same radio station, with the fuel dial at the same spot. I didn’t have to adjust the seat or mirrors either. And I strongly suspected nobody else had used it in the interim. Or if they had, we were remarkably alike.

But the company tells me they have 76 cars now in Dublin and Cork, and that membership is 2,000 and rising. So maybe it’s the idea’s growing popularity I should worry about.

For now, I realise that my attempted escape from car ownership hasn’t been fully tested yet. Like the English football season, the winter is still only beginning. That’s why I probably won’t make a final decision on my Avensis until Christmas, or even later, and the January transfer window.

@FrankmcnallyIT