OUCH

I hadn't managed to get out all day, not even for the school runs but with the rain on, I decided to attempt it at 3pm. The blue car was the obvious choice, being heavier and more powerful. I jumped in, turned the key and bang, the car sunk. I jumped out and saw I'd blown a tyre. I found that a bit odd, given I hadn't actually moved so couldn't have run over anything under the snow. The thought of jacking up such a big, heavy seven-seater didn't appeal, especially in the snow so I checked with Tesco Breakdown and was pleased to hear that my policy covered someone coming out and changing it for me. Within the hour a bloke with a jack knocked my door. He said it'd take ten minutes. Of course, he then rang the doorbell to say he'd found the wheel spring had snapped bursting my tyre, so firstly my tyre couldn't be changed, secondly I would need to be towed to a garage for repair and finally he couldn't get the tow truck down my street until the snow had melted. That was Thursday. The street and car are still in the same state and the seven of us are wondering how to walk as far as Silverburn to go birthday shopping for both Mum and Amanda. I am considering going out with my hairdryer on an extension cable if it hasn't gone before Monday. Thomas is going down south next week so I am trying to work out how to drive five kids and myself to school, not that five need to go to school but I can't really leave Anna home to babysit Amaia while I do the school run! It's going to be another fun week.

GIMMEGIMMEGIMME!

I just have to have this Abarth 500 - even JC (who I usually can't stand for more than 3 seconds) managed to endear himself to me in his write-up!

BOY RACER?

 Thomas's new car Originally uploaded by PhylB

Thomas has never owned a car before and has often astounded me with his lack of basic knowledge of common models. If someone gave him a lift, I'd ask what kind of car he'd been in or what model and he'd have no idea. When hiring a car he'd ask things like - should we hire a Fiat Punto - what size are they? He could barely tell the types of car other family members owned. So when he bought his first car last week, I expected it to be a functional but boring addition to his existence... but oh no... Much to my surprise, within hours of acquiring the paperwork he was looking at number plates with EU flags and saltires on them, followed by steering wheel covers, replacement gear knobs and now he's talking alloy wheels! My beloved car virgin is turning into a boy racer, no less! It's quite cute to watch. Now I just need to indoctrinate him in the merits of the new Fiat 500!

LEARNING TO DRIVE

Damn! If only I hadn't learned to drive in 1985, I could learn to drive now :-(

NOW I NEED TO WIN THE LOTTO

1966 Fiat Nuova 500F and 2008 Fiat 500
Originally uploaded by dave_7

I have been desperate for one of these since they were released last year but obviously a four-seater car is not very sensible, I'd need five seats in a second car at the very least. That, at least, is how I have been convincing myself I don't want one.
Today I was reading the news online when this add popped up. A topless one would be fun! I played with the 'configure' button for a few minutes only to find one of the things I could add to my home-designed baby Fiat was a middle back seat belt!!! Wow... now I really do need to win the lotto because they are hideously overpriced, if cute as hell!

FIRST CARS

Given cars in Denmark cost more than most people earn in a lifetime, Thomas has reached the ripe old age of thirty something without ever having owned a car. (This is possibly wise - look at what you buy if you can afford a car at 20!) Anyway, given the tank I drive with the 7 seats and 2.3l engine eats petrol and tyres like there's no tomorrow, we thought a sensible solution would be for Thomas to buy something with a small engine and tyres with only five seats that we could both use either on the school run when there are usually only four or five people in the car or also on the odd weekend when the big kids are at their dad's, economising further (and insuring my big blue tank will live longer in the process for trips where all of us need to go out together). Obviously given how many of us there are though, a five-seater small car would be much better than a four-seater small car... and here starts the rant. You go on all the well known Scottish car dealers' web pages and you can put in all sorts of parameters to help you find your new used car. It starts with basic stuff like car make, model, age, and price bracket. That then gets refined down into transmission type, mileage, age, engine size and finally if you want to specify further you can even give colour, number of doors, type of fuel, road tax pricing but none of the pages let you specify number of seats! I am fairly car nerdy but little cars aren't something I have had for 15 years (since the no-lapbelt-in-the-back law came in), so I didn't know for example that a Ford KA now only has four seats (it definitely had five when Derek owned one as a trainee lawyer 15 years ago), as does the Fiat panda (which also had five when I used to borrow mum's to drive to uni back when I was about 18). So I list the cars with small engines: you get Fiat Puntos, Seicentos, 500s, Daihatsu Cuores, Vauxhall Agilas and Corsas, Suzuki Altos, Renault Clios, Chevrolet Kaloses, Kia Picantos, Peugeot 206s, Nissan Micras, Ford Fiestas, Toyota Yarises, Citroen C2s and C3s, Skoda Fabias, Hyundai Getzes, VW Polos, Seat Ibizas etc etc. I want a button that lets me ignore any of the above without a 5th seat. I don't want to have to google every model to check. Why can't I specify the number of seats I'd like, especially given I can specify how many doors I want. Come on sort these frustrating car dealer pages before I give up and just stick with my tank, please!

COOL CAR

 Metz Originally uploaded by PhylB

Years ago in Metz I saw this little car sailing down the river. When it got to the edge, it simply drove out and parked in an ordinary car park. For all the years I lived on the South side of Glasgow and sat in a traffic jam to cross the river to the North side every morning at rush hour I often wondered where you could buy one!

CAR INSURANCE

I don't really understand car insurance. I added Thomas to my car insurance six months ago. Recently it was due for renewal and the quote came in asking for about £10 more a month than I am currently paying. I phoned and told them where to stuff their insurance and of course, with the current business climate being what it is, they decided to try everything to keep my custom. They ran through my details to see if there was anything they could do to bring down my premium. Had I changed where I park overnight? - well no, my garage is still too full to fit it in. Had I changed my annual mileage? Nope again. Did I still want my boyfriend on my policy? Well yes, but we got married so now he's my husband but yes I still want him on and yes he is still the same person... oh well if you got married, that makes all the difference - the policy instantly dropped by £13 a month and came in cheaper than competitors... but why??? He is still the same person, living at the same address and driving the same car in the same manner. How did marrying me instantly drop 20% of my car insurance quote? Is it really that much safer to drive while wearing a platinum ring on one finger maybe? Is he safer now because he now has his mind on the road and not on whether or not I'll marry him??? It truly is bizarre.

WHERE TO PUT THE KIDS?

Having just seen this in the flesh in ASDA car park, I am wondering whether they are likely to make a 7-seater version? :-\ It was my first love in cars and though I tend to be a driver of very big cars these days, I still have a soft spot for these. If I win the lotto tomorrow (though I guess statistically this is unlikely given I have never ever played lotto), I will be buying myself one for use on any trips where there are fewer than 4 occupants in the car. It is just stunning, and cute into the bargain. Failing that I guess I'll buy one once the kids leave home...

NISSAN MICRA COUPÉ

a wee red car
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I saw this in ASDA car park today and fortunately had my mobile phone on me. I instantly thought of dad when I saw it.
Dad has had Alfa Romeos for a while now but has been talking about buying something else once he gets his pension this year. He seemed to be tossing up between a Jaguar and a new Fiat 500 (Stop laughing! He's a sweet, if eccentric man!)
Anyway, I thought of dad because mum is constantly complaining that if he has a small errand to run he steals her little red Nissan Micra, as if he almost prefers it to his Alfa, citing fuel economy etc as the real excuse for constantly borrowing it.
Here is the sporty Nissan Micra Coupé, so it is like a dad version of my mum's car.
Better still, it has one of those hard tops you can press a button and fold away into the boot. Dad claims to this day that his favourite ever car was his old Sports Honda Civic with a fold-away roof.
Come on Daddy, I think this would suit you more than a boring old Jag, (though the Fiat is cute).

ISN'T THE NEW FIAT 500 CUTE?

You know very well that these days I am definitely a big car driver - anything with fewer than 7 seats feels positively claustrophobic. But back in the late 80s when I went to live in Italy as a student, I positively fell in love with the old Fiat 500, and made sure the first car I ever bought was a baby Fiat. Today I doubt my large family would fit in a Fiat 500, but if I had to get something wee and cute just for me alone, I would have to consider this. I even hear it just won cutest tiny car of the year!

WHERE DO ALL THE NAILS COME FROM?

Punctured Wheel
Originally uploaded by mholt

It isn't 4 months since the last time I had both a blow out and a slow puncture to pay for on my old Citroën, so I was less than happy when the tyre I inflated at ASDA last Saturday needed reinflating yesterday at TESCO and again this afternoon. Back to Kwik Fit and yes another nail through the bloody wheel, another £17-00 bill - poor Pudge will have to wait an extra fortnight for his new shoes!

LANCIAS

Italy is hoaching with Lancias as always, I noticed two models in particular - this fancy saloon model - the 'Lancia Thesis' and the equivalent in their range to the Nissan Micra or the likes called the 'Lancia Ypsilon'. What puzzles me as that they don't seem to sell in the UK market, or if they do no one buys them. I imagine the likes of the Thesis would appeal to the drivers of the Toyota Avensis, the Alpha Romeo 156 or equivalents and the Ypsilon to the drivers of all medium range cars - Fiat Puntos, Nissan Micras, Ford Fiestas etcetc. So what's the story?

A PERPETUAL PROBLEM OF EMBELLISHMENT

You probably remember the little blow-out I had on my old car a few months ago. That resulted in one wheel missing a hubcap, sorry the Citroën handbook insisted on calling it an 'embellisher', a word which is taking on 'jalt'* status in my family now, for several weeks. I kept passing what I thought might be the one I had lost every morning unable to stop on the motorway. In the meantime, my kindly (if crazy) parents, who were equally offended by the sight of my unembellished wheel, were picking up every embellisher they saw by the side of the road until finally they found one that fitted - it said Vauxhall on it but at least it covered the mucky wheel. So, needless to say, one of the things to make me happy when I picked up the 'not grey car' was its full compliment of matching Citroën embellishers.
Obviously, when I returned home from work last night and noticed one was missing, I was livid. I dragged Thomas and the kids on a trip round everywhere I had been during the day twice and with relief we found it (I think it was the third one we tried and there it was on a verge near Lenzie, phew. I decided to buy cable clips on my way back from nursery today (however ugly they are, these things cost £30 each so I wasn't going to lose it again).
When I got to B&Q car park at 1-10pm, it was bloody missing again! Pudge and I went on another expedition all the way back to nursery where it was lying slightly mangled, but hopefully not beyond cable-clipping on on another grass verge. It is however staying in the boot until I've been to B&Q this time.

*At the age of 3, I once referred to a JCB digger as a jalt, not knowing the word for it, I simply made one up - I had lexicographical tendencies even then - and since then my entire family have always called diggers 'jalts'. It is hard to remember that isn't the real word for them!

SMART CARS

 

These days cars are getting smarter... or are they? I hadn't read the full spec on mine when I bought it so was very impressed the first day when the headlights switched themselves on as I went through a tunnel and off again at the exit. I was again thrilled skinny the following day when the windscreen wipers detected the rain and wiped slowly then quickly depending on the severity of the downpour. Today I was zooming along the motorway when the sun came out. I reached for my sunglasses, but they were missing from the car pocket. I remembered I'd forgotten to take them off the other day so picked up my handbag to feel for them while driving. My bag was overfull and I quickly concluded that driving and searching together would result in my premature death so tossed my heavy handbag onto the passenger's seat. The car instantly started beeping and flashing - oh shit what have I done? Then I looked more closely - it was telling me my overweight passenger had forgotten to put on his seatbelt! ;-)

THE 'NOT GREY' CAR

As promised, here is a photo of my new baby! Isn't this cheerier than a cloud-coloured car? For anyone who is interested, it is the beautiful Citroën C8. I will let you know more about it later in the week as it has so many buttons and knobs, I haven't quite worked out what it can do yet! (There are a few other photos on my flickr page too, if you want to see them).

WHY MAKE THE DREARY DREARIER?

Car Park
Originally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

I decided last week after my car's little gearbox problem, that the time had come to buy a new one. Sure it isn't that old at 5, but I'd rather have something I don't need to repair from time to time, buy new tyres for etc. I decided I would prefer a 7-seater this time as I often need to take my 3 kids plus say my parents to the shops or for a day out, which is just much less hassle when I don't then have to force them to bring one of their own cars along. So on to the internet I went to surf myself a nice new people carrier. I tried the obvious in Scotland - that is to say Arnold Clark, and he had a wonderful selection of 1 year old 7 seaters, all makes - the Seat Alhambra, Peugeot 807, Ford Galaxy, VW Sharan, Citroën C8, Renault Espace, Kia Sedona etcetc - you name it - dozens of them - great, but 90% of them were grey or silver.
Why?
Scotland is often a grey, cloudy, dreary and depressing land where you feel you could catch a cloud just by reaching a few centimetres above your head. This isn't like Greece or Italy or the South of France where you are greeted every morning by brilliant blues, sunflower yellows, explosions of purple bougainvillea. We spend 80% of the year looking at grey. So why do we paint our houses grey and fill our roads with grey cars? Can't we have pink houses and yellow cars to make our life a little less dismal?
Anyway as luck would have it, one of the best cars I found on sale at Arnold's with the lowest mileage and highest spec wasn't grey so I bought that. Call back in a few days if you want to see what colour I am trying to brighten the world up with!

VW BEETLES

...And I mean the real Beetles 'of the people' as opposed to the Yuppie Beetles you can buy these days if you feel like spending twice as much on a little car as a car is actually worth just for ponce-value. I remember this one fondly - not sure why I photographed it in black and white (a teenage phase I guess) as it was a beautiful pale blue colour with a dark blue roof. It was the first car I ever drove - I had been nagging my dad from I was about 6 to teach me to drive so when I got to 16 I was fit to burst at the prospect of having to wait yet another year until I was old enough to get a provisional, so my dad, as a treat let me drive my mumś beetle (notice not his own Saab!) on my 16th birthday. I not sure that was a great idea in retrospect as it probably made me even more unbearable for the 366 days between my 16th and 17th birthday. Anyway like most 60s babies I have a soft spot for the original Beetles - they were the car of my childhood, the first old bangers we drove in the 80s. But by the 90s there were few left and we all missed them and secretly moaned. Then around the millennium they brought out the replacement yuppie Beetle - nice enough - they do stand out as different as the original did but the market was all wrong. They were aimed young rich singles, not families with loads of kids and little money. I still remember driving to Blackpool in a Beetle in '77 - 4 people, 2 suitcases, a tent, airbeds, camping equipment, where did we put it all?! (It had practically no boot) And they had those fake leather seats your legs stuck to on the one hot day every summer if you had the misfortune to be wearing shorts. That was what Beetles were really about, not those silly vases on the dashboard the new ones have. You are probably wondering my point by now? Just that 70s were Beetles driven by family men, 80s were old Beetles driven by teenagers, 90s were no Beetles and noughties started off as new poncy Beetles BUT in the past month I have started to notice them all over once again in Glasgow and around it - lovingly preserved Beetles of all colours - all around 1970 models. I have seen one or two every day for the last month, and all different ones - I would even kind of like one myself - well as a second car - for nostalgia's sake :-)

ANOTHER DREAM

This time not one I dreamt while asleep but more what I hope I will have enough money to buy one day! For the past year since I had my third kid I have been thinking how much more practical a 7 seater car is than a 5. Even going to the shops and taking my parents with me always meant borrowing André's VW Sharan instead of driving my own Citroën Picasso. So I have been looking at the Vauxhall/Opel Zafira or the Renault Grand Scénic while cursing Citroën for making the only small MPV with just 5 seats. Until yesterday when I stumbled upon this ad! Yes the new model of my car has just come out and it has 7 seats! And they even make it in a nice shade of metallic red - cool - now I just need a decent enough income to buy it :-\

HOW 1 EURO ENDED UP COSTING ME £27

All summer Citroën have been harassing me about my Picasso. It was recalled for safety reasons - something to do with the wheels - apparently if they didn't urgently fit something to each wheel, the tyres were going to explode or something similar. I had a total of 3 recorded delivery letters in 7 weeks. Excuse me for not see the urgency but I have had this car since new, it is 4 years old and I have personally driven 40000 miles in it without a hitch so I assumed it could wait till after the school summer holidays to be fixed so I didn't need to hang about for 2 hours with three kids in their garage service bay. Anyway I gave in this morning and took it in, and had a nice walk by the Clydeside while they were repairing it (will blog or flickr those photos later).

While chatting to the man this morning I happened to mention that Charlotte, in one of her scientific experimental periods had inserted a 1 Euro coin into the cd player 6 months ago 'to see if there was any music on it as it looked like a little cd' and funnily enough my cd player had stopped working instantaneously. So today while fixing my wheels they removed my cd player, stripped it down, took out the Euro and guess what - it works again and it only cost me £27 to have it fixed, or rather Charlotte will be receiving a £27 bill when I pick her up from school later. I hope that will teach her that it is sometimes better to ask than to experiment.