Thursday 2 March 2023
I’m having an up and down week. On Monday, I felt overwhelmed by dwelling, festering and stressing about as much as I seemingly could dwell, fester and stress about. On Tuesday, I felt great, got a lot of writing and work done and things felt really positive. Yesterday, I had a mixture of both, though the negatives centred largely on the shock of a £1,100 bill for my car, followed a few hours later by the first official, generic “thanks but no thanks” agent email for my manuscript.
Living twenty miles away from the nearest shops and with no public transport for nine miles (and only then a very sporadic minibus, which I suspect I will never use), a car is essential. I took it in for an MOT, service and I knew it needed a new timer belt. I had forgotten about the advisories on last year’s MOT, which resulted in brake pad replacements. There were also a few other smaller things. It’s a six-year-old car and I have hardly had to spend anything on it outside MOTs and services in the two-and-a-half years I’ve owned it. It’s just that I drove it the twenty-odd miles to the garage, dropped it off at 8am yesterday, borrowed their courtesy car and drove to Tweedbank station to go to Edinburgh while I waited for my car to be ready. I had a lovely long walk around Edinburgh, had two coffees out and a fab Indian lunch at Tuk Tuk, a restaurant I’ve followed on Instagram for years but had never been to, explored more areas I’d never visited (Marchmont, Morningside, Southside) and walked about 16,000 steps, hurrah. At no point did I even consider actually having to pay for my car’s day in the garage. Anyway, there it is. I need my car to work and be as safe as it possibly can be. But still, ouch, ouch, ouch.
The courtesy car made for an adventure. I’ve never been offered a car while mine was in the garage before. It was a Twingo and probably the most basic car I have ever driven. I couldn’t lower the seat so I was slightly stooped when I wanted/needed to see more out the windscreen. The display panel, such as it was, was not directly in front of the steering wheel, but a small round display, the size of an alarm clock, with a digital speedo, a basic petrol display and, I discovered when I fiddled with the lights at the station carpark and realised I’d been driving in the drizzle with no lights on, three small indicators of the strength of lights that were on. It had five gears, though a fifth gear was ambitious. The car, which wasn’t old, shook, was designed for someone a bit shorter than me, it was noisy (petrol, not even diesel) and massively underpowered. As I left Hawick, going from 20 mph speed limit, to 40 mph, it seemed apparent that the jump from 20 to 40 took the duration of the 40 zone to reach. It was then 60 mph on the A7. 40 mph. Long pause. 41 mph. Long pause. You get the picture. By the time I got to about 50, conscious of a build-up of traffic behind me, the A7 started a long uphill section. 50 became 49, then 48, then 47 … by which point, the car behind me was really close, so close I didn’t want to risk going down to fourth gear for fear of losing so much speed in that instant (either by the mere fact of going down a gear in an underpowered car or for not knowing the car and not yet having gone from fifth to fourth gear) that the car behind would drive into me (mind you, it would at least have pushed the Twingo forward in an unprecedented surge of power). Anyway, the car and I got down to 43 by the time we reached the crest of the hill. We did make it to 60, but just before the next 40 zone. It was loud, shaking, I was slightly stooped and I could see an ever-increasing trail of vehicles building up behind me.
On the twenty-mile drive back, I was about five vehicles behind a slow vehicle doing – hmm, actually, about the same speed I was probably doing on the way there, which meant that the Twingo and I were more or less comfortable pootling along at about 40, both up and down hill. And the lights were on. Very glad I opted for the train to Edinburgh rather than driving.
While in Edinburgh, feeling a real buzz about being there, it occurred to me that my ideal home environment is our house in Scottish Borders (though warmer) with the trees, hills, rivers and abundance of space around us. But my ideal out and about surroundings are cities. Not small towns, cities. I do love walking in the countryside, but I probably prefer looking at it than striding across it. I suppose I like to feel energised and stimulated when I’m going for a walk and, for me, that is a city environment. But to stand in our garden and hear birds, rustlings and the wind around the plants; magic. To look around the natural world and see plants and trees and growth; magic. But again, I appreciate that as I stand and look around or wander slowly. But to walk in a city, with so much going on, I find it exciting and energising; magic. So basically, I need a portal at the end of the garden, through which I can walk and be transported to the centre of a big city (at least the size of Edinburgh) for my walks. I think I genuinely do love and kind of need two extremes, and how unbelievably lucky we are, for a year or more longer at least, hopefully, to have homes in both a big city and in the middle of nowhere.