…and I’ll give you the key!  (It’s a song, just in case that doesn’t translate outside of Bumpkinsville.)

OK, it’s not a combine harvester and you won’t be getting any key, but I do have brand new car!  It all happened a few weeks back but I didn’t think anyone would really be interested.  I had a complaint that I’d not mentioned it though, so here you go, John ;o)

Yes, the old, very old and falling apart Pog-mobile is no more.  Much to my amazement, someone bought it.  And to add another layer to that amazement, he didn’t want me to wash or clean it inside (both had needed doing for about nine months).  Apparently when you are a 17 year old boy the first clean of a first car is up there in the list of top 10 things to do.  That was fine by me :o)

So I sold that car 3 hours after landing from my holiday, and picked up my new one less than 24 hours later.  It’s red.  For anyone more into cars than me, it’s a Volkswagen Take Up.

I’ve never been great with driving a car I’m not used to.  To be honest, I’ve never been great at driving full stop, but it’s gone almost smoothly.  I’ve only been back to the garage three times.

1)     My lights wouldn’t turn off (turns out that they stay on all the time the car is on)

2)     My interior light wouldn’t go out (turns out that I just wasn’t giving it long enough)

3)     My petrol gauge was broken (turns out that I possibly have the most fuel efficient car in the world and it took over 80 miles for it to start registering that I’d used any petrol)

I don’t think they’re too keen on me at the garage right now.

I had a slightly unusual piece of advice from my sister’s partners when they inspected the car.  The hatchback bit is all glass rather than a window in a piece of metal.  ‘You’d better be careful with that’ they said.  So I must remember that erm…if I reverse into anything I do so slowly so as not to shatter it, I guess.

The most exciting though, is the fact that a little display now tells me when I should change gear.  My sisters have been right all these years in that I’ve not been changing gear much at all.  I’ve now realised that my default gear for the roads around here is 3^rd.  The new Pogmobile informs me it should be 5^th.

Now I just have to get used to the fact that my lights and window wiper sticks are on different sides to the old car.  It the moment, every time I flash my thanks, I just wash the windscreen instead :o)

The new and the old. I had to sneak this photo when I took the spare key for the old car to it’s new owner as I realised that I’d not got one picture of the poor old Pog-mobile :o(