SO FAREWELL little silver car – it is a far, far better thing I do. My car is going to our boy.... he likes it just as I do. It’s a good starter model and I wish him many happy years on the roads of Ireland, up hill, down dale.
Besides, he’s good for the money.
It was all a bit of a whim but I’ve just upgraded to six gears on top of reverse (gulp), a cut-out clutch for city driving (hmmm) and cruise control.
“Sounds like Nightrider – you should call it Kit,” joked a friend in work.
I’m feeling the fear. I’m boldly motoring on.
My mother writes my son a “Good Luck in your new car” card.
She knew a man from Donegal who used to rake his little car around the streets of his home town in bygone days when a traffic jam was a tractor, a hay cart, two cows and a Morris Minor.
People didn’t like the noise.
My mother writes in her card: “It’s my own wee jalopy and I’ll ram her and rake her whatever way I like!”
It’s what the man used to say to those who complained about his revs.
My mother came to the garage about my new car.
“I like that purple one,” she said.
“So do I, but we’re having the red one because it’s a bargain,” I told her.
It reminded me of when I told my friend about the last car I bought.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s silver,” I told him.
Cars are in our gene pool. I’ve been the sole driver in the family up to now. I love getting behind the wheel.
Remember Cynddylan on the tractor?
“Gone the old look that yoked him to the soil.
“He’s a new man now, part of the machine,
His nerves of metal and his blood oil.”
My party trick is switching gears with just one finger, slow and smooth. I don’t like people who are rough with a gearbox. I put my nephew James in beside me and turn up the volume dead high.
“Aunty Nuala, Bruce Springsteen,” shouts James. “Debbie Harry... Bob Marley.” The boy is well schooled.
My father never spent money on anything except the occasional new car. He had had his fill of second-hand cars in his youth.
When my eldest brother was finally born – after two weeks in the hospital and several gallons of castor oil – my father arrived up at the hospital delighted but a little upset.
“What is it?” asked my mother.
“My big end has gone,” said my father. This was an expensive deal. It was like a crown wheel and pinion. No, I don’t know either but they don’t come free in the Rice Krispies box.
On that day long ago, cradling her newborn, my mother could have said she had a big end of her own that had been through some trauma, but she’s too much of a lady. Anyway, after that dad threw caution to the wind and surprised us every couple of years with a new car.
I was there on the Friday night when he swept into the driveway in the clementine orange Beetle. Let’s say a set of sunglasses would not have been amiss. He turned the corner and a small crowd of children stood to attention like Meerkats.
Ma was never a fluorescent orange gal. But she got into the Beatle and it fitted her little legs perfectly. She fell in love.
Sadly, a lout with a nail scratched her from one end to the other at the Gaeltacht one year. Dad lost his taste. One day he swept in driving a green Morris Marina. The orange bug was gone.
Ma never got over the loss. Driving was never quite the same. But she stills like her own wee jalopy at the door.
I like mine too. I shall always love the little red car that took us up and down the hills of Donegal only to fail at the roundabout on the way out of Letterkenny at rush hour on a Friday.
I had to throw myself on the mercy of the garage man who wanted to wait til Monday.
The new car will be on the road by the time you read this. Pinch me, I’m nervous.
Put on Bob Marley, James might say: “Every little thing’s gonna be all right.”
