Tomorrow's a New Car

When the plan was to live in Manchester we didn’t think we were going to get a car. As we use the thing all the time, I now realize that the no car thing was just nonsense. It may have worked in Manchester to go carless some of the time, but even then we would have needed the wheels to get out of town and hit the hills as we do every weekend

Once we moved south of Manchester the vehicle was necessarynot only so we could still head for the hills, but so we could go to a decent market (the one in the village is sub-par), get the kids to school and explore the various pubs in the area.

Because of various reasons that I won’t go into now, the most economical and possible option for carness was to rent from Avis or one of those - and that is what we did. Early in our stay we took the train to the airport and drove away with a Vauxhall Minerva (pictured behind Rose at left). GM owned, Vauxhall is an economy manufacturer and the car we have has been solid and worked well for us. Recently, however, we have noticed that the breaks squeak and it may even be time for an oil change. Time for a trade in. Called the guys at the airport and they said to bring ‘er in - that’s what we’ll do.

Now, I’m the sort who cleans the hotel room before leaving and scrubs the pots clean if you have left something at our place after the potluck so I of course had to clean the car a bit. It isn’t the biggest car, but I was still able to haul three shopping bags of stuff out of it. A good vacuum sucked up tons of dust, dirt and gunk and I was able to get at least 20 or 30 pistachio nuts from behind and under the seats, leftover from a burst nut bag during a trip to Ireland. I figure that the car has been puked in at least 25 times, had numerous drinks spilled in it and traveled a couple of thousand miles since we have had it.

There are a couple of scratches on the door from when I was driven off the road on a little path and it has a spot on the bumper that needs attention, but the thing is so dirty that I don’t think anyone will notice. If not, we’ll live.

Hope the new one is red.