Wednesday 2 July 2008

Lament for a Land Rover


I want to blow up my car preferably with an anti tank missile or some other form of loud ballistic. In my mind’s eye I see her exploding with doors spiralling into the sky, a satisfactory whoomph and puffs of white smoke. It will take place on a gloriously hot clear sunny day. Piercing blue skies in the background, the car alone on the heathery moor.
What could be a more fitting end to a rusted out Land Rover, which has faithfully served my family for some 14 years?
It has been integral to our lives having seen me courted, married and brought back to earth with a loud bump due to impending motherhood. It has been there for the highs and lows. It brought my babies back from hospital, taken us on holidays and visits, brought us back from funerals.
We’ve slept in it, eaten in it, popped champagne corks in it. My son's first ice cream was devoured in it. We’ve been sick in it, hurt in it and even peed in it (well come on the poor boy was only three and Daddy would insist on going on to the next lay-by!)
We boogie in it, shout in it, sing in it and laugh in it. We tell stories to each other, play eye-spy, just shout at each other. Sometimes we just listen. We have full and frank discussions in it – many about it. We argue and we make up in it. My husband tells me he loves me when we are in it.
We’ve done 187,986 miles in it and now its bottom has rusted out and I can’t afford to weld it all together. And that is the point I can’t afford it any longer.
If diesel prices hadn’t risen so fast I might have nursed her through a few more years - in fact I always thought I would. But the cost of getting her through her MOT AND keeping her on the road is just too much to bear- some £6,000 a year and rising.
So the time is near and now it’s the final curtain and I am having problems emotionally letting go of a two-ton hunk of rusting metal. It’s just not in me to see her crushed, she deserves a better send off so I am seeking ways to do just that…and that’s where the tanks come in. The Army I’m sure could do with target practice and I know a man that knows a man who just might be interested - anything but the ignominy of the breakers yard….

Go on you know you want to...

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