To try again

Students returned to Aston, I returned to my work, and just like that, over two days, my body reanimated from the rigor mortis that set in this summer. I stopped eating when I wasn't hungry and could suddenly wake up without feeling held down by purposelessness. I started using the app again to track what I was eating and lied to myself saying it would not turn into the madness it has been in the past, knowing that it almost certainly would. I felt some energy in a run even, like my body had been held back. The fire hose of problems to solve from the beginning of the term turned on and when I looked up, it was the end of the month. I could take my wedding ring on and off without any trouble, losing the claustrophobic feeling I have when my hands are swollen and I struggle in my nervousness to pop it off.

Having signed away the second grey Picasso and been promised some £2920 sent to my bank account, after the fees had been taken out, the freedom of no longer worrying about poor French electronics made me wonder how much actual loss was behind other sunk loss fallacies in my life and why I hadn’t, a year ago, pulled the plug on this car and taken the cash at that point. Having sold the car, I could walk out the front door without a reminder of the failure of buying this car so quickly, of not properly consulting with Yoko, of the three years I spent as some evangelical apologist for a car that was clearly not worth my energy. Now, I had the zeal of a different conversion, telling people the thing they already knew: you can just sell a car and not have to deal with it anymore. There’s no moral high ground in keeping a terrible used car, no conservative financial guru from TikTok is going to give you a prize for holding on to it. You can just sell it. I even thought momentarily that this could be it, that I could be free of any car permanently, that we could never again have to worry about the engine light coming on and ruining a day or week or month of our lives.

The dream of the carless life was short lived, and Yoko and Mia and I set out to look at cars in Walsall, first before the Picasso was completely dead, and second, after I sold it, by way of Uber, which seemed like insult to injury as I paid the £40 to look at a car that I was sure would be the one, until the three of us sat comically in the back, proving the point that it was not going to work in instances where the whole family was travelling. The lad helping us was called Chad — I clarified it was Chad not Chaz— and unlocked and locked five or six cars for us to sit in. This one was good but too small, or too expensive, or the colour wasn’t right and I grew progressively more cross with the situation and the ways of reasoning about cars. Was Ford a good car, I have no idea, I don’t even know what that means. What is a good car company anyway, you have this Citroen made with a Mini engine in a failed collaboration from six years ago, how in the world can you even know now.

This rant about car companies and national prejudices and stereotypes, had several different iterations, but I felt validated when one of the salespeople along the way, someone I rode my bike out to see on a Monday afternoon, pointed out that the Nissans all had Renault engines in them, so you can’t really tell anyway. The complexity of the situation is, I said as he waited to ask me about my American accent, completely beyond an individual’s ability to reason about, between the age of the car, the make, the mileage, the size, the national stereotypes. We then talked about his uncle in California, my Brompton, and I made a promise that I could keep, that I would be back if something came up, knowing I would never see this man again.

Having crossed that car off my list, I returned to Walsall to see a different Chad, a Chad called Grant, to drive a Toyota Corolla Touring that turned out to be both the wrong colour and too expensive. Grant and I went through the formalities of disappointment in this particular car, and reaffirming our shared belief that something would come up eventually. I trudged back to the bus stop, defiant to avoid another £40 in an Uber, and telling myself that truth that people who regularly changes cars tell themselves: that a car closer to what I wanted would materialise at some point if I could manage to be patient.

The next day, I worked my way down the list of potential cars and booked a seven-pound round-trip ticket on the train to go to Big Motoring World in Cannock, taking my Brompton with me, and feeling a bit of hope that this one was at least on paper what we wanted, but also bracing myself to open it and be greeted with the smell of four years of stale cigarette smoke. A young Asian guy helped me out and the car initially seemed perfect. As we drove around he told me he was just 19, had been working at Big Motoring World for just two months and was studying business at BCU. We did the test drive loop twice and talked about making money and cars and leases and the value of the extended warranty, before we pulled into the car park, and he went back into the dealership while I called Yoko to say that I thought this was the car we wanted, that it ticked all the boxes, and I went into finalise everything.

Faizan went through everything, the different packages they offered, and I suddenly became very old, like my father, saying to him, I appreciate that you have to go through this but I know it’s not worth it. I pulled out my phone and showed him my car depreciation and repairs spreadsheet, I have a spreadsheet to tell me that this is not worth it, like I was quoting scripture, and he relaxed into a conversation about his parents’ restaurants and the sort of job he wanted to do as he got older and the relative merits of life in the UK to life in the USA. He passed me on to the next guy, who took my payment, then another woman who registered the car, and then, in less than four hours, I was driving home in a pristine silver 2020 Corolla with just under sixty thousand miles, the sweet spot.

My daughter, talking about the trip to Bath in the Citroen Picasso shuddering and choking its way through the edge of the Cotswolds, said the experience was traumatic. I scoffed, saying it definitely wasn't traumatic, and she said it wasn't my place to say if it was or it wasn't. Of course, she was right. I get into the new car, my middle-aged car which is nicer than any car I have ever had, which shifts seamlessly between the electric and petrol motor, which countless YouTube videos hail as reliable, and I still worry the engine light will come on, that some sound will appear that I haven't heard before. The spreadsheet says I will spend £500 in repairs in the first year, but I hold on to the hope that this is me being overcautious, that maybe this choice was the right one, that my different calculations, my national stereotypes, my experience might actually pay off. I suspect it won’t, given the complexity, but the belief that it will, the fantasy of control, allows me to accept the new bank balance, to do what I need to do, and hope, like I always hope, that things will get better if I just keep trying.