Spider’s webs – amazing things in many ways, but creepy, too. I’m sure a little piece of your soul leaves your body any time you walk through one by accident. They’re also far too dusty and fragile to seal anything…other than a car’s fate. I pulled the front door shut behind me, strode along the drive and saw them clustered around the tailgate and door mirrors, quivering in the breeze, a reminder that I had barely driven my car in weeks. I knew right then it was time to wave goodbye to my Golf GTI.
I simply wasn’t using it often enough. I realise now that we’re achingly close to being a one-car family, but not quite. What we needed in my household, for now at least, was one modern, spacious, do-it-all family car, plus a second set of wheels, a little runabout for those rare occasions when my wife and I both need a car at once. It should be very cheap to buy and run, but still modestly practical, and it should never eye me angrily from its spot on the driveway from where it may not have moved for a month.
The family car? As it happened, we collected it the same week I watched AF67 ULB being driven away by its new owner. A 10-month old BMW 320i Touring, it will serve my young family brilliantly for years to come. But my Golf was always going to be overkill alongside it, and too expensive given its paltry workload, and I’d feel guilty every time I caught sight of the poor thing sat outside, like an old pair of trainers relegated to gardening shoes, dust and cobwebs gathering with each passing day.
