I sold the family car and left us wheelless for two weeks. The brown rust-bucket failed its MOT, so I took the mechanic’s offer of flogging rather than fixing it. For a few hours I was giddy with the spontaneity of it all. I hadn’t thought it through. 

Oh, we can live without a car, I crowed. The kids have got bus passes, we both work from home and the train station’s a five-minute walk away. We’ll save loads of money and the environment. But then we ran out of logs for the fire and they’re a bit cumbersome in a rucksack. Then we realised the location for my husband’s Covid jab would have been fine to reach on foot, had he not just had a hip operation. And who was going to do the gymnastics run for us? 

We wondered if we might have been a bit hasty. I say we but this was obviously my fault, so for appeasement's sake I bought him a really nice pie from the farm shop and did the washing up. Then the hunt began for a replacement. His wish list included a big boot and DAB radio. The teenagers were up for anything that wasn’t fawn. I just wanted decent brakes.  

You wouldn’t think it’d be that difficult, would you? We trawled the internet for hours, booked time slots to traipse round dealerships, looked at lease-hire, HP or something called balloon finance and fell out with each other a bit. It doesn’t help that we’re neither auto savvy nor wheeler-dealers. They’d have seen us coming a mile off. On foot.  

We picked one that matched most of our criteria. Annoyingly, the chestnut one was cheaper, but even I agreed it looked like something the cat might curl out. The silver one seemed that bit fancier and after a test drive, I was treated to a full tour of under the bonnet. I tried to look interested and forced out a few poignant questions such as ‘which hole is for the wipers?’ and ‘what do I do with the dipstick?’ I was assured that everything would be taken care of when I booked it in for regular servicing. 

We’ve never had a nice-ish car before. And I’ve rarely kept them clean, feeling more at ease with unmatched wing mirrors and a film of flies on the dashboard. In all my history of car ownership I’ve not once asked someone to put their muddy wellies in the boot. If I can’t smell rotting apple cores or melting chewits I’m way out of my comfort zone.  

So it came as a surprise to everyone when I bought a car bin. For once, I thought, I’m going to take a grown-up approach to travel. I’ll be the mum who insists on clean shoes and dangling pine trees, no biscuits and regular vacuuming under the seats. It’s been a week. There’s a tip-run looming, I need a bag of compost and my travel cup has been re-instated.