Today I have mainly been V4.0 (Part 1)

I think ours had done 140 miles when it was MOTed in May last year. And the wife still wants to keep it because it’s occasionally handy, mostly for her family.

The upkeep (insurance, AA, road tax, MOT, service) has got to be north of a grand a year :man_facepalming:

Work out how much getting an Uber would be, then get rid of the car

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Fortunately the Mini is less than £500 for Insurance, tax and MOT so it’s quite cheap.

In the past we have admittedly done some quite big slingshots out of London, but covid put paid to that. And if / when things go back to normal there’s no way it would survive the procedure - it’s a heap (with 17,000 on the clock).

If the recent cold snap hasn’t killed the battery then the MOT will do for it. We’re definitely looking at a bill for far more than it’s worth.

If you have long journeys, just hire a car. It costs £200-odd for a week, and it’ll be a much more modern car that actually works!

Will we be able to get Radio 6?

That’s what we want more than anything :smile:

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They’ll have DAB radios and Bluetooth connections so you can stream from your phone!

:heart_eyes:

We’re stuck with Radio X at the moment.

FWLIW, back when I lived in That London I relied on hire cars for the occasional journey beyond sensible reach of public transport. Way cheaper and less hassle than owning/parking a car in London.

Could you have any option to rent-out your parking space? That could easily pay for the occasional hire, and then some.

That’s what I did when I lived in whitechapel, I rented out my parking space for £300 a month and just hired the a Merc A class from easycars London Bridge when that was all they used to have.

Zipcar is easy peasy

I’m hoping to go car free once both kids are out of primary school. The £500ish per month that it costs to run a car pays for a lot of hires and taxis.

Claire is a bit less keen on the idea, we’ll see!

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3.25hrs of Teams school governor meeting. Feels like my brain is dribbling out of my ears and nose.

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IME it takes a certain type to be a school governor.

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3.25 …I want more points

work - meeting with my senior team.

Attended a ground breaking ceremony for our new building this morning - watched some dignitaries with a shiny spade dig a pile of freshly prepared soil. Nice to see the site though - lots of contractors looking busy, diverting services and grouting already done, piling starts next week…exciting times - key handover is in March 2024…

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Staring into the sun for 6 hours.

350 miles pretty much due south then, as the sun moved west, west from Rothbury to Didcot. We were promised some cloud and sure enough a couple of wisps did dim the sun twice - once in S Yorkshire and once in Northants. In each case for less than 60 seconds.

It gets wearing and can make it difficult to cope when the traffic is dense and fast, and espcially if it’s also trying to sort itself out after, say, a junction. As here

We were perhaps 30 vehicles behind this accident (car and lorry collision). Two fire engines, three ambulances, half a dozen police vehicles. Traffic stationary for 50 minutes. By the time we were allowed past there wasn’t much left of the car. But it seems the occupants were all taken to hospital. No mention on the local news of anyone pronounced dead at the scene.

Winter hazards aren’t just ice and snow and fog.

I saw the aftermath of that going past the other way about 4:30 (big queue going through Islip trying to get around it).

Works in the other direction as well, there are parts of the M40 between J13-12 where you point straight at the sun on a winter morning and where there has been at least one pileup.

The M27 is horrendous for that as most of it runs east to west.

As you’ll know, the southbound pull-on to the elevated A34 at Pear Tree is generally a white knuckle experience - a shortish near-blind uphill slip road with a very short entry into just two lanes of dense, fast traffic, half of which can still remember belting down the M40 and then the A34 from J9 (also a barrel of laughs. Not). That’s the main route for wagons from the centre and east of the country to the channel ports at Portsmouth and Poole.

I guess the sense of relief after actually making a collisionless entry onto the main carriageway caused a momentary lapse of attention 200-300m later. And that’s all it takes …