Of cars and children

Seven years ago, when I was much nearer fifty than sixty and my youthful forties were quite a recent memory, we bought a Ford Mondeo. With three children still in full-time education we weren’t flush with cash, so it was 2 years old, not brand new. But it went quite well and has served us as a family car ever since.

We do also have a smaller car, cheaper to insure for the “children” to drive - currently the red Peugeot that you see behind the Mondeo.


But this week the Mondeo, which seemed fairly healthy, sat its MOT (the annual test to prove that cars are safe to drive) – and it failed.

The garage estimated that it would cost £750 plus tax at 15% to fix it up enough to pass.

The Mondeo is worth about £500 for insurance purposes. But unfortunately no one stole it yesterday.

So that was that. This morning we drove it to a scrap yard. The scrap yard lady handed us £80, we handed her the paperwork, she gave us a Certificate of Destruction and we left. Feeling like traitors.

Cue violins, preferably playing the Dead March from Saul (Da, da-di-da, da da da da da da da).

Seven years ago our children were nearly 18, just 21 and nearly 23. Son was about to go to university, just a few weeks away from meeting the love of his life but at this point still our boy entirely. Daughter 2 had finished the third year of her first degree and was still going out with the brilliant but rather strange young man who was going to decide that though he would always love her, he wanted to look around him for a new romance (at which point we wanted to throw rotten fruit at him). Daughter 1 was – is this right? one gets confused - about to go to the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford to do her first Master’s degree while her husband-to-be tried to decide what he wanted to do with his life.

These seem like happy days from the rosy distance of 2009, though I suppose they must have had their worries (eg the rather strange young man, who I never thought was right for her). Now two of our beloved offspring have left home and the third, our lovely lovely Daughter 2, has just had her offer to buy a flat accepted and will soon follow her sister and brother out of the nest as an independent person.

Ah well. We don't really need two cars any more and at least Mr Life and I aren’t headed for the scrap yard ourselves quite yet. But we will miss Daughter 2, as we miss all of them, so much. Fortunately we do still have the cats.