Attachment is a strange thing, both lovely and terrible. I've always understood how my attachment to people works, and to pets, and occasionally to places. I've never really got the concept of attachment to things though. I remember once disagreeing with my Mother over this. She was being drearily sentimental about things that were taken by thieves from my Great Uncle's house. The things in question were a number of antique family items dating back to the 1920's and 30's. Most were left over from a time when my Great-great Grandmother sold china out of her living room window. The bits that were kept by the family were the unsalables, chipped, cracked, badly mended, or seconds. I often think with amusement of the looks on the faces of the thieves when they examined their booty in the daylight (the theft happened overnight and as the house had been unoccupied for some time, the electric had been turned off). "I had wanted to have these things about me", Mum said. I didn't get it at all. The thinks had never been hers, and had been handed down quite at random. They weren't very interesting and most had no value. She was shocked at the crassness of my approach, and made that clear to me. It was another chilly gust in our ever stormy relationship.
Today, the scrap-man came to take away my car. I find myself grieving the loss. It was an old thing M201DNV, 180,000 miles on the clock, dented, scratched and rusty in places. Incredibly reliable, surprisingly nippy, completely familiar. It was the first reasonably smart and reliable car we had. I got it just after I landed the job at PIA in 1998, not as a vain symbol of my newfound status, or even as a treat. The car I was driving, an ancient Pugeot 205 bought for £200 was failing to start on every other occasion. A £3000 loan from the bank got me the second hand Toyota, the brand chosen on the recommendation of the man from TPS Autos (I wanted something family sized and reliable that would take a wheelchair).
In its 120,000 miles with me, all sorts of minor adversities befell it. The first one happened about a week after I got it. I was driving an unfamiliar service user when he urinated freely in the front seat. About three litres of urine saturated the upholstery. The smell remained with the car until the end, faded, but reappearing at inconvenient moments (but when would have been convenient?). When I got it, it was blemish free. It took me a couple of years to scrape down the side of it, coming out of a drive that was obstructed by a lamp-post that seemed to have arrived with the morning paper following a sleepless night shift. I never repaired the damage, Nick painted over the scratches with some special paint from Halfords. Years later, rust began to emerge in the wounded place, but I had done even more damage by then, so it didn't seem to matter. Christmas 2001, I scraped the wheel arches quite badly in a multi-storey carpark. Worse discomfort was to come when a chip shattered the windscreen. The replacement was not a tight seal, but I wasn't to know that until the following autumn, when in damp weather, the car would steam up. Cursing, I got used to this, and drove with the window open.
In 2003 I said I would replace it in 2004. It had cost me money for the first time that year, the radiator needed to be replaced. In early 2004, my time with PIA was over, so I kept the Toyota. Every year thinking that if it got unreliable I would trade it in. It never did. Last year, for the first time ever, we got two cars. One for me in Cornwall, one for Nick in Coventry. Nick got the modern replacement that will with a lot of luck do us another 10 years. Now, we no longer need two cars. I tried to get someone to buy it so that it could continue to be used, but couldn't find anyone who wanted it. It was too smelly, too scratched, too squalid. Finally the MOT and Tax ran out. It had to go. I feel a bit of pride that after a month of being laid up, it started first time and made its own way up the ramp of the pick-up. The man gave Nick £100 for it.
After this weekend, I won't miss M201DNV. It took us on many adventures, the kids grew up in it, it helped me earn my living, but it was just an object. Things break, rot, get taken from you. you go off them. They cost you. That doesn't mean I'm not materialistic, I love a new toy. There's a lot of pleasure in money and the things money can buy, ask anyone who hasn't got any. I'm just not sentimental about things. Am I?
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