The Idler

A Country Diary - 36

7 December 2005

MORE PROBLEMS WITH cars. This morning I received a summons, asking me to attend a court appearance in January where I would be accused of driving without insurance and failing to produce my driving license and MOT when asked to by police. This relates to my car crash in the summer, when I drove a guest’s car round the corner, crashed into a neighbour coming up the hill and then realised I wasn’t insured. For some strange reason I thought that the police may have turned a blind eye but clearly not. The question now, being definitely guilty, is what sentence will I receive? I could plead mitigating circumstances — stupidity, perhaps?  — but they’re bound to throw something at me. What sort of fine would it be? Actually, I was thinking that if I was banned it might not be too bad. In any case, I’ve been planning on selling the van and going down to one car. I calculated that the annual running cost of a car, what with maintenance, tax, insurance, depreciation, petrol, dealing with crashes and all the rest of it, is something vast, probably more than three thousand pounds, and that could get you a hell of a lot of taxi rides plus it would be a lot less hassle. In any case, the van is a absolute pain. Just this morning Victoria got it stuck in the mud and we had to run round putting pieces of carpet under the tires to rescue it.

BEING BANNED from driving might also accelerate my riding project. My long-term plan is to use a horse as a means of local transport instead of the car. One day I’d like the to go as far as getting a trap to go with it for trips to the beach. However, we are beginning to realise that there is a huge amount of cost and hassle involved in running a horse. Maybe even more than a car, although I can’t believe it. In fact, our neighbour, whose stables our temporary pony uses, is thinking of sending her temporary horse back to its owner because of the sheer amount of hard toil that the thing demands. Oh dear, is there no way of living without interminable work and hassle? Maybe we should go back to using our two feet. Walking might be slow but at least it’s reliable and also completely free.

THREE STRAY sheep appeared in our yard the other day. I called our landlords but they said to leave them alone as they did not belong to them and would find their way home eventually. So we had pet sheep for a few days, and at first this was fun. But this morning I went up to my vegetable patch, and of course the hungry blighters had got into it and completely nibbled away all the kale leaves and half of the broccoli plants, not to mention the parsnip tops and a good deal of the strawberry plants as well. Ah, me. I think they will all grow back, but the kale attack in particular saddens me. Before the sheep came I had four sticks with a few sad looking leaves on top. Now there are just four sticks. I hope they enjoyed their meal.

VICTORIA has been on an upholstery course locally, which has been great. She’s enjoyed it very much and has mended one of those rush-work Van Gogh chairs that had been sitting around the house looking sad for years. It’s got me thinking about a craft revival. Instead of slaving away in boring call centres and office jobs and warehouses, would it not be more sensible to go on a course — they are really very cheap — and learn a craft? Apart from being intrinsically enjoyable and useful for one’s own household, in these days of mass production, well made, handmade objects can fetch good prices. Stop consuming and start producing!