THEY CALL IT a G-wiz, an automated electric vehicle, but I think Sonny is a far better name, writes John Butler
Sonny is a cross between a golf cart and a Smart car, the latest transport option that is beginning to proliferate around London. Sonny has entered my life as part of a house-minding situation.
The owners have strong ecological principles, and are not short of a few quid. Therefore, I am staying in a degree of splendour to which I must not become accustomed. Nor can I get used to Sonny, as he will be returned to them when they return from India. Until they do, though, he's mine, as is the bio-fuelled mansion, with its intelligent light bulbs, multiple bins, ethical hangover cures and bespoke vegetable patches.
Driving Sonny is a gas, figuratively. You squeeze yourself in, shut the door against your leg, turn a key and flick a switch, then you're off, steering him electrically, ethically and - beyond all - comically around the town. The fuel gauge needs to be watched, though, as you won't get past 30-odd miles before Sonny needs a charge. After 15 miles of pleasant whirring, you reach the point of no return. Then, you'll need to find one of the few public charging stations which some boroughs of the city provide free of charge, or take the little fella back home.
My job is to keep Sonny turning over, and every night run a lead from the side of the house onto the road and into his haunch to fill him with electricity. The lead must be gaffer-taped down onto the pavement to protect the owners from litigious pedestrians. It's a common enough sight around these parts.
As with any good comic performance, there is a sense of vulnerability driving around north London in a G-wiz. Pulling up at a red light in Kilburn Park, local youths and muscular shark-faced hounds see you and will crack up, coming over to direct their barbs even closer. You stare at that red light (please don't menace me, please don't menace me), willing it to change to green before the dog tries to mount Sonny and conceive the next generation of even more organic hybrid vehicles - half snarling pitbull, half electric car.
The slouching kids are right to laugh, because they're young enough to recall how the driver of a G-wiz enjoys the same spatial relationship with his ride as Postman Pat had with his mail truck. Driving Sonny, my hands appear enormous and I have to crack a window to find room for my elbow. I must lean forward on top of the steering wheel to prevent my eyes being hit by the visor when crossing speed bumps. This inclination makes you feel like a grotesque, misshapen giant of the kind that Roald Dahl imagined.
I have decided to offset the comic element by playing intimidating hip-hop with thudding basslines as I whirr. It's important that people know that when I roll in Sonny, I roll deep. I do this for them, because really, they should be afraid. Sonny is totally silent, and no one hears him coming. You can often get past people before they have time to formulate the killer insult, but pedestrians use their ears to check for oncoming traffic, and walk out in front of him all the time, narrowly avoiding a nasty bruise to the shin and fatal damage to the car.
Sonny is incredibly easy to park - as easy as a bike. And the solidarity among the G-wiz community is also pleasing, if a little smug. Beeps and waves are exchanged, a kind of congratulation from one to the other. This used to happen between Beetle drivers and Harley riders, but this one is the most refined, conveying as it does a subtle "well-done-you" from one caring soul to another, as we ford junctions among loud smelly vehicles which spew planet-ending gases. I wonder whether the other G-wiz drivers would still wave and beep at me if they knew Sonny was not mine.
I am an imposter. It's not the first time I have house-sat, and on both occasions, I sat in large, comfortable, expensive houses while I searched for a place of my own, a place that I would end up paying for out of my own coffers. Although it's a comfortable transition into a new way of living, the comfort creates problems with expectation. Waking up in a four-poster bed on the third storey is no way to prepare for a day of flat hunting on the wrong side of the tracks.
I believe the phenomenon has been encountered by others before me, and has been expressed far more clearly: how do you get them back on the farm once they've seen Paree? It all ends a week or so hence, when they return and we exchange keys on the doorstep. I'll close the gate behind me and trudge down the tree-lined road, hankie bound on a stick.
As I pass the G-wiz, he'll catch a glimpse of his master leaving and start himself up. I'll turn as I sense a subtle shift in the ecosystem, and as I gaze back over my shoulder, through the soft-focus of my hot tears I'll see Sonny whirring down the road after me, hazard lights flashing, his own wipers working overtime.
The owners will watch their investment crest the hill and shout at him to come back, but it will be too late. The G-wiz will be mine. We'll speed off together, but in the end, the joke will be on Sonny, because not only will I be driving him, in this rental market, with its two-grand-sterling-a-month-bedsits, I'll be living in him, too. Then Sonny will have to figure out how to get the hell off the farm and back to Paree, where an automated electric vehicle like him really belongs.
John Butler blogs at lozenge.wordpress.com