A Car with Personality.

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Older readers will remember the "Renault 4"

It was an odd looking humpy thing with nothing to recommend it visually. Once inside and driving it, things didn't improve either. Measured in available horse-power it was about a hoof-and-half. When turning corners it gave it's exaggerated impression of overturning completely. It offered an experience akin to an aircraft making a sharp turn, (pointing one wing towards the earth before leveling off again). 

If you liked basic simplicity though, this junk-heap was a right charmer. There wasn't a single frill or bauble anywhere in or out of that car. It had five wheels of which one was the steering wheel, the heater worked weakly in summer and not at all in winter. You had to provide and wire up your own radio & speakers and the bench front seats were deck chairs with cushioning. The one I bought for £400 (Punts) was chocolate brown and damned sad looking even before we met. Two tyres were bald, (Front right and back left), and one of the many windows was badly scratched but as it was a side one, it ended it's days like that. A screwdriver and monkey wrench was all you would have needed to strip it down to a chassis only. The brilliance lay in the simplicity.

And I loved it after less than a week. It was huge inside, I'm not kidding. Loads of legroom and headroom and because the mats were black and made of rubber, muddy boots didn't matter. I drove to Dublin and back in it one time and apart from the fact it took four times as long as a normal car to do the journey, I was as happy as Larry with my secondhand Renault-4. On that trip too I was traveling so safely within speed limits that I relaxed with a few beers on the way home as I drove.

The back door was like a van door and the space inside was similar to that of half a van floor in space. Then, two clips flipped at either side of the back seat and two floor clips then slid easily out, allowing you the remove the whole thing in one (folded) piece. The resultant space was enormous. When the (Polish) Pope came to visit us all in Ireland in Sept. 1979, I took my then girlfriend with me in the 'Brown-Horror' to Limerick. The deal was that we had to get parked in a muddy field with all the other thousands of pilgrims in their cars and then wait in that wet rainy field until dawn. When they sun tried to come up, we were allowed to walk the five miles to another muddy field and watch El Papa fly in. I often believe that her Father took one look at my sad brown car and assured his wife that their daughter would come to no harm in it. Remember at the time there were skin-headed youths skidding all over the place in souped-up Escorts. Those guys never even gave this long-hair a second look. 

Never mind the Pope though, the car was brilliant. I kitted out the huge floor space with a mattress and slumber down and stocked up with beer, wine and some sandwiches. Add a shapely sexy girl for the night and I was in heaven, (arf, arf). And when many other cars got bogged down trying to get back out of the field, the mischievous Renault slipped and slithered out the gap in the field and down the road for Cork, dirty but undaunted. 

A most useful tool I always carried in the Mini was a hand-held wooden mallet and like the Mini, it worked a treat on the Renault too. Any attempt at spluttering starts and a judicious couple of taps of the mallet to the engine block worked a treat.The first time I opened that long bonnet I was taken aback by an equally long aluminum pole than ran from behind the dashboard, over the top of the engine and right down to the grill in front. This turned out to be the gear lever, the knob of which poked out from the middle-top of the dash inside. There was plenty of play on it too because when you went from third to top, (ie. fourth) the whole apparatus came back about two feet or more.

Following the aluminum pole to the grill, it curved down at a right angle to the gearbox which was right up forward and below and a big clip attached the pole to the gears. One day while putts-ing along minding my own business I went from third to fourth when damn me, the aluminum pole just kept on coming. The clip attaching it to the gearbox just fell off and the pole lay limply on top of the engine. But my mini toolkit had many useful things in it including some wire and a pliers. Arse in the air then and head and arms buried deep down the front of the engine, I reconnected the pole and the gearbox with wire and was once again putts-ing.

A few months later I put the car up for sale and the guy who called around to me first just drove it once and gave me £450 for it as was. It was several months after that before I saw that bloke again. He was in a city boozer one night and we did a double-take before remembering the Renault-4. For some reason I remembered the patch job done on the gear lever and asked him if it had ever given him bother.

"Naw-boy! She's grand," he answered cheerfully.

Even if the body rusted completely and fell off that baby, I like to think the aluminum pole is still wired to the gearbox somewhere. The crazy Renault-4 just had that kind of personality, a sort of beautiful ugliness. I liked it! You know the Pope was memorable too but for me that day and many more days to follow, my little ugly Renault was the star of the show.

 

 

High-Handed Presumptions

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To pay your car tax you must go to the tax office yourself or have an internet connection and credit card. Your payment is then subject to a percentage penalty from your bank for using their service, whether by cheque or credit card. The presumption is that although you are doing them a favor by paying up, you must put yourself out to do it both with your time and your money.

The country is crawling with so-called experts of all kinds and they charge for their time. Say hallo to one of them and the meter is running. I had a doctor friend of mine phone me once and ask, "How are you John?" When I said, 'fine' he answered jokingly, "That'll be twenty-one guineas please!" Do you see where I'm going with this?

Our time, we are told, is precious and indeed that is true. If you get a GP appointment now for 10.00am, so do eight or nine other people. He's charging fifty squids a go while you are sitting bored, waiting for your turn. The stark message is that the doctor's time is far more important and precious than yours, whoever you are. Well, I say it isn't.

How would it be if we all charged them right back? Just say we all put an hourly rate on our time for those in officialdom wishing to communicate with us. Say you are commanded to appear in court for an unpaid motoring fine. You should be able to write back and say, "I'd be happy to oblige at €24.50 an hour up front. However, the date you suggest doesn't suit me because I'm extremely busy at present, (your Honour) I could fit you in the following Thursday between four and five but you'll have to come to my home. Terms and conditions apply."

Just look at the businessman who actually charges and collects VAT for the Government. He has to gather the relevant information first, pay an accountant to prepare the facts and then take time out to write the cheque. Why shouldn't the businessman be able to add his own invoice for all of his time and work on their behalf? The guys and gals in the VAT office are getting paid for their time and work, aren't they?

It seems to me we have become too placid and obedient. The next time you are asked to fill out any official form, tell them about "your" hourly rate and point to the small print where it should state that there is a minimum of one hour applicable as soon as you begin. You have to live after all and we only get one finite life. Why presume you must do everything for free? After all, you are the expert for the form you are asked to fill and so you deserve to be recompensed. The person asking you to do this work is not doing it for nothing themselves, are they? And you are giving them the necessary information they need to do their jobs. Do they really believe information is free? Try getting something free from them. You even have to pay for the 'Freedom of Information" stuff and you are supposed to have a right to that. 

Perhaps we should all be paid for voting on polling days too. Do they think we have nothing better to do with our time? They are the ones looking for the turnout after all. Most of us don't give a shit which party is in power because one is as bad as the other and point of it all is so they can really party afterwards. A few quid wouldn't go amiss and it might incentivize us to make a better effort for them. When a Garda waves you down and asks for your license or insurance, shouldn't you be able to answer, "Certainly Guard, and which station do I send my invoice to?" 

Any of you got other examples of what we could all invoice for?

I am unacceptably inappropriate

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The word "inappropriate" seems to have hounded me all of my life some way or other. Back in the seventies my long hair was permanently inappropriate. My dress sense too came in for the same criticism and my whole demeanor in fact was 'considered utterly inappropriate.' 

In tandem with this was the word "unacceptable". This presumably referred to the way somebody inappropriate behaved. This pair of three syllable words were my constant companions from school through the boardrooms of business and even hounded me throughout what passed as my social life. My voiced opinions somehow always managed to be at variance with what was generally thought to be wise, or fuck-me, what was acceptable. 

I must admit to having times when I thought it would be easier to just conform, disguise what I thought and utter banalities like everyone else. It wasn't as if I was trying to stand out or be different after all. That was the last thing a spotty teenager like me wanted, then or now. I had no particular desire to be a leader of any kind and still don't. I just had some pathetic instinct to say what I was actually really thinking at the time and some way or other, this seemed to strike a discordant note around me. 

I'm not different though. I have the same hopes and fears we all have. I live with unfulfilled dreams and terrible worries like you do. I'm awfully normal in fact and maybe that should be concerning me instead. But those fucking twin words won't leave me alone. I used to ask myself, 'what have i done to deserve this?' I have never knowingly set out to do another wrong. I do try my best to keep the peace and am rarely grumpy or unapproachable.

So it is only in my latter years that I've taken out these two horrible words and dusted them off for a damned good look. My first thoughts are, inappropriate for whom? Unacceptable by whose standards? Who is it up there on what throne that is deciding this? Which set of whose ideals do I not conform to? And critically for me, just why the fuck would I want to be acceptable to or appropriate for those people? 

I think by now you know the kind of people who love to use those two words. I think their use of them is a defense of the indefensible or a disguise for an infertile mind. They'll harangue you about standards to aspire to and maintain and what I've come to know about this is that all of it is designed to control and neuter you. My thesis therefore is that you are unacceptable or inappropriate, (and probably both), if you cannot be easily led and controlled. 

So I wear my unacceptable inappropriateness as a badge of honor now because years of putting up with nagging and exclusion has granted me the right to do so. Those of you who know me will know that I regularly appear on radio and television in the defense of smokers and make no apology to any of you for it either. I try to be the voice of reason and tolerance in these debates and I am in return, abused by commentators and adversaries for being inappropriate and unacceptable. 

Would a two-finger salute be acceptable and appropriate in such circumstances? The old horse-laugh and a Harvey-Smith?

The risk of being lucky.

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A risk is a situation involving exposure to danger, the dictionary says, but what does that mean?

Insurance assessors and bookies calculate the odds of either you or them losing some money. What they are calculating is the "risk" to both parties. As you might expect, they lower the risk to themselves and increase the risk to you. The risk business underlies all of our transactions and is ever present too in our everyday lives. It starts when you wake up in the morning in fact. What is the risk on any given morning that you will stub your toe on the bedside locker? Insurance companies see great risks associated with negotiating the staircase down to breakfast. If you are half-asleep and fall down the stairs, they are in the frame for a large unexpected pay-out. And that is even before you put food in your mouth at the breakfast table.

Now when the Good Lord or whoever the designer was, sat down and sketched out the specifications of the human body, I don't think he anticipated us flying around in metal boxes at speeds we were never designed for. The original specs for us saw even the most agile of our number confined to speeds under thirty miles per hour flat out under our own steam. It was we who designed the motor car thereby creating a whole new raft of risks. The motor car spews out carcinogens into the air everyone breathes placing all of us at risk of life-threatening cancers. That is a fact and the only question is the odds of it happening.

The office or factory you work in is covered in case you keel over on your ass. That's your employer recognizing the risk and  spreading it so that the company is not liable for a big pay-out. Risk always carries the danger of loss for someone. Pre-historic man had to eat but hunting for food also carried the risk that he himself could become the main coarse for some other species. From earliest times then, risk has always been a central part of being alive.

But in these politically correct times we have developed an unhealthy aversion to risk in our Western Societies. Somehow an impossible aspiration has crept in to become risk-free at all times and that frankly is utter nonsense. We humans are impossibly frail and dis-united and while much if not all of our environment presents us with risks constantly, our biggest risk is from each other. Even those urging us to avoid risks are themselves risking a situation where we lose the ability to deal with risks. They would like us all to view risk as a very bad thing but I'm not so sure.

For example, our bodies come with an immune system whose task is to assist us in dealing with risky things that happen to us physically. But the immune system has to have plenty of practice to make it stronger and better. In other words, the more you subject it to risk the better able it becomes to deal with further risks. How's that for an infinite loop. In relation to the word risk we will also always hear the other word protect. The word 'protect' is designed to give us a warm fuzzy feeling and it implies caring by extension. But our daily reality is far more harsh than that in our drive to be a risk-free society. 

I can look back now at my Father's generation and know they were hardier people than my generation. They were more resilient and could deal with more adversity than we ever could. Today if you even see something upsetting there seems to be a queue of so-called professionals eagerly wanting to offer you counseling. What sort of namby-pambies have we become when we cannot cope with life's unpleasant sides. How risk averse have you become when you need somebody to hold your hand after witnessing someone else's car accident? In other times such a scenario would have been covered by the simple expression, "Them's the breaks!" 

If as a people we become so frightened of the risks that surround us naturally then we are only making ourselves less able to cope and deal with what can happen. The resultant whining then is merely trying to apportion blame to others for what you yourself should have taken care of or accepted. But there is a problem with that attitude too.

Today I believe that the voices warning of all of the risks we face are the very people making money from those perceived risks. They need to sell us on the idea of the particular risk they profit from and their chosen sales-tool to do that is fear. The risk mongers are selling fear and the more they disable our inherent resilience to risk the more they profit from us. Fear is something that can freeze our resilience. The figures suggest that one in three of us will get a cancer in our lifetime. "Them's the breaks!" Luck or the lack of it is the single biggest imponderable in risk. You can tick all the right boxes in life and cover all of the bases but one moment of bad luck changes everything no matter what you do. 

So my theory is that it is a better to accept risk and learn to cope with it when it goes against you then to spend you time in fear and dread of risk and avoid it at all costs. We need to court risks to make progress and get ahead and in doing so, we further minimize our risks!

Mad, isn't it?