The illusion of freedom in the age of entitlement

I passed my driving test a couple of months before my 18th birthday. My dad, (rather generously, given that I drove his car into a fence four days after my 17th) used to let me borrow his car, a pale green Austin Maestro that I loved driving. I had a couple of close calls, but never drove it into anything else, and a few months later I got my own car, a red 2cv that I loved driving even more.

Where I grew up, everyone had a dad, and everyone's dad had a car. Sometimes their mum had a car too, a smaller one. My 2cv was someone's mum's car. There was one family where there was a dad who didn't have a car. They used to cycle everywhere. Everyone thought they were odd. Dads didn't ride bikes. Bikes were for kids, mums (a few, including mine), and teenagers who hadn't passed their driving tests yet.

It was a long time ago, and a long way away. And, looking back, astonishingly suburban. But basically, if you could drive, you could go places. We mostly went to each other's houses, or to pubs (though we mostly didn't drink and drive) or to the beach, or just drove round aimlessly smoking cigarettes and listening to tapes in the small hours of the morning. There was a road running across the Moss that I used to drive down with the roof off and with my friends standing up in the back screaming. We would give each other petrol money, 20p here and 50p there, and keep our cars running just above empty.

Cars were like extensions of our personalities. They were certainly extensions of our personal space. I never took the 2cv to university -- there was nowhere in Cambridge I needed to go that I couldn't walk to -- but I drove up and down the A34 every weekend in her to visit my Significant Ex when he was living in Oxford and I was accidentally living in Andover, and when I properly moved to Oxford in 1994 she came too. We were a two car couple, and when we split up I drove up to Boars Hill and sat on a bench wrapped in a blanket, gazing at the view with a head full of white noise.

When I got together with M, we were a two car couple too, but after we moved in together it became clear that we didn't need them both. Mine was the one that needed to go -- only a welding enthusiast should own a 20 year old 2cv -- but psychologically, I struggled with the prospect of not having my own car. What if I wanted to... go somewhere? Well, said M, you can use mine. But what if I wanted to... leave? Well, said M, there are taxis. And if you find it unbearably oppressive not to have a getaway vehicle parked outside, you can always get another one.

After a while, I got used to sharing a car, and pretty soon after that, I realised that a burden had lifted... no more MOTs, no more insurance renewing, no more tax discs, no more checking tyres, no more cans of WD40 on a cold morning, no more remembering to renew RAC membership, no more welding bills. And I could still go pretty much anywhere I wanted. And I haven't left yet.

But we haven't had a (working) car at all for about four months now. The circumstances surrounding this are less than desirable, which is one thing. But there's also the reality of life without a car.

And I am genuinely surprised at how ... nice it is. The fact that it's summer helps, but still.

1. Getting to work. Often, I used to drive. I ought to cycle, but it's such a faff, with the lights and the clothing and the negotiating of bike through house. And there's a hill. I feel genuinely bad about this, but I'm always running late, and the car was there for the driving. But I have discovered how easy it is to get the bus. It can be quicker than cycling, and has an easier start, in that I just fling myself out of the house in the right direction. No paraphernalia required, and on the way home I don't have to find a parking space. Bargain.

2. Not having to buy petrol. Have you SEEN the price of petrol recently? It used to make my blood run cold, but now I sit on the bus and smile.

3. Deliveries. I already knew about Amazon, Tescopolis, Ocado and Just Kosher (for those pre-Christmas pickle orders...). But I now know that Majestic Wine will deliver for free. With glasses, if you are having a party. And it turns out I live in easy walking distance of Majestic Wine, and can carry 48 (well, 47 in the end) glasses back to them with no problem. B&Q will deliver a shed, and then let you get in the van with it to direct them to the allotment. The Pink Giraffe delivers for £2 (or free for bigger orders). When I had a car I never used to get food delivered, and it's a brilliant idea. And I was pining slightly for garden centres, but then I discovered the Real Seed Catalogue.

4. Taxis. We got the bus to Waitrose, did our shopping, called a minicab while we were at the checkout and it took us and all our shopping home for four quid. I wanted to go to swim in Hinksey Pool in the pouring rain. We got a cab there, and then walked into town afterwards and caught the bus back.

5. Trains and bikes. We went to a wedding in Wallingford. We caught the train to Cholsey with our bikes, cycled to friends in Wallingford for lunch, got changed, cycled to the Town Hall for the wedding, wheeled our bikes to the river and put them on the wedding party boat to the reception at the Beetle and Wedge, then cycled back to Cholsey for the last train back to Oxford.

6. Just bikes. When it's not pouring with rain, it's a lovely bike ride to Hinksey Pool via backstreets and towpaths... I did know that already, but I still used to drive it.

7. Locality. The furthest we ventured during our lovely, lovely week in Robin Hood's Bay was Whitby, and we walked there. And then got the bus back. We bought all our food in the local shops and drank all our beer in the local pubs. The local shops were pretty limited, but we went with what was there. Vegans might have struggled, but we had fried fish, fish pie, fish soup, and went out for fish and chips. M asked the woman in the village shop if she had any spinach: she didn't, but she ordered us some in for the next day. As part of that conversation, she recommended the gingerbread and Wensleydale combination which was a highlight of the week. If we'd had wheels, we might not have discovered the beck, eaten so much ice cream from the van on the beach, or devoted three hours to building the best sandcastle in Christendom.

8. Mutual favours. When I want to go to the supermarket, which isn't very often, I do a deal with ex-housemate S. I get a lift there and back, and she gets help managing the tantrums in the frozen food section.

And coming up, possibly, joining a car club. Collective ownership of the means of getting to the tip. A tiny part of a great leap forwards? Let's hope so. We are the generation that bought more cars, and we're getting what we deserve.

This is unless the government start bigging up car clubs, at which point I'm going to go right off the idea. They are, perhaps unsurprisingly, turning out to be a bunch of fuckers. More on this anon.

joella

The sadness I feel for the grass in the Business Park

This was one of the posts on the 'never got round to it' list. So many things come into my head then go out of it again. But the grass in the Business Park hasn't gone away. I see a lot more of it than I used to, on account of getting the bus to work.*

The Business Park does not have a bus stop. It is designed for cars, and getting there by any other means can be challenging. You can cycle, and there is a cycle path of sorts, but you have to contend with kerbs or (what most people do) deal with a bike-lane-free roundabout. You can walk, but you will find there are only long ways round, and that there is only pavement on one, varying, side of the road. Or you can get the bus, which means getting off on the main road and then walking.

Which is all exercise, I guess, but you quickly find that the paths put there by the Business Park are more aesthetic than functional. They do not go where anyone wants to walk. So everyone walks on the grass. I counted the steps from the Business Park end of the footpath from the bus stop to the back door of the New Building if you follow the path: 470 steps. Then I counted the steps if you walk across the grass, cut through someone else's car park and climb through the bushes: 290 steps.

All the plants in the Business Park (with the honourable exception of a couple of magnolia stellata which have somehow snuck in) have that low-maintenance, block-colour municipal look. It's like they looked at the architects model, with bushes made out of coloured sponge, and bred real shrubs to look just like that. But it's greenery (and in the case of photinia, of which there is tons, reddery) and it seems to be thriving on all those bark chippings.

The grass is not so lucky. It is the kind of grass you see in the sale at B&Q, piled in crumbly, dehydrated rolls next to the wafer-thin sheds. It is not thick, it is not lush, it looks like it spent its early life in the grass equivalent of a battery shed. Nobody has ever loved it, nobody has ever sprinkled seeds on its bare patches and said 'please grow!'. It could pass muster from a distance, but you get the impression that the person who ordered it would secretly have preferred astroturf.

Grass of any kind is better than concrete, and easier to walk on than bark chippings, so I am not quite sure why it makes me so sad. I think it's because it sums up the joylessness of the business environment. This isn't even a bad one, and the New Building itself has much more going for it than many of its neighbours, but it says a lot that the central feature of the Business Park is a pond with a waterfall, and they put it on a roundabout.

There are thousands of people working there, but there is no communal area, no shops or cafes or services, except the ones in the individual buildings. At lunchtime, you can walk under the ring road to Tescopolis, you can get in your car and drive somewhere, or you can stay in your air-conditioned box.

So it remains that the best thing about the Business Park is the grass where the path out of it ought to be. It deserves to be better.

joella

* There is more to say on the car saga too, but for now let's just say my knowledge of bus routes is higher than at any point since 1987.