Walking the Tightrope: Mum's Taxi Service
Despite all the stresses and demands of running Mum's Taxi Service for her family, Sally Codman is determined to hang on to her wheels.
The Department of Transport can toll, tax, threaten or cajole - but after a week without wheels I'll fight long and hard to remain a car driver.
Walking everywhere - in the worst of the snow storms - made me, and the rest of the family, appreciate just how much we rely on Mum's Taxi.
Even Only Son, who has been known to hide from friends by sliding down in the seat, because this Mum's Taxi isn't as showy as some his friends ride in, has missed being ferried about.
I have to admit that my Skoda Felicia, in a fetching shade of dirty blue and decorated in an abstract white pattern ( birds - my parking space is under a tree) isn't the poshest car doing the school run by a long chalk.
I don't care. I don't have to worry too much about the odd lick of paint left on the gatepost. I can leave it just about anywhere and return to find it intact - the car next to it is usually a more attractive prospect for smash n'grab thieves.
And the chances of getting carjacked are virtually non-existent.
All I really care about is the convenience and independence of having a fairly reliable set of wheels at my beck and call. The pace of life today requires it.
Parents are often reviled for using their cars for the daily school run, but how else do we cram in work and shopping trips, visits to the docs, dentists, hairdressers, hospital, plus a social life etc. etc. without wheels?
When I lived a ten minute walk from school I used to do the school walk most days. Now we live twenty minutes away we're never ready in time.
Anyway, haven't you noticed how it always rains around 8.45am and 3.30pm?
What about global warming? Pollution? Energy supplies? Conservation? I can hear readers with a green Planet outlook asking, don't I have a conscience in these matters?.... Well, if I'm absolutely honest, "no" - I haven't time.
Like most working people these days, especially parents, I'm too busy tearing around trying to meet today's deadlines, to have the time to worry about things that might (or might not) happen next week, never mind ten or twenty years in the future.
The Government can try it's best to persuade people onto public transport, but until public transport improves significantly they are fighting a losing battle.
The last time we visited London for a weekend, I was almost converted to the joys of tube travel, until we got caught in the tea time rush hour in Oxford St. I suffered instant claustrophobia and panic and Only Son - who was around seven at the time - was in serious danger of being trampled underfoot.
And as for cycling - forget it. Until enormous intercontinental juggernauts are banned from our roads, you won't catch me on a bike. With the amount of bags I usually carry, balancing would be impossible anyway.
Then there's our wonderful British weather. You'd arrive everywhere looking like a drowned rat or covered in that fashionable perfume "L'odour sweaty personne", very appealing.
Then there's the problem of where to leave a bike these days without returning to find your seat/tyres slashed.
Forget it.
In comparison the car provides a comfortable, weatherproof, steel cocoon, with all the things we like; comfy seats, winter heating, summer air con, music and a bit of personal space. Even in the ever-increasing traffic jams you don't have to sit jammed up against a smelly, chain-smoking, dodgy-looking, stranger who wants to talk about football.
The kids, brainwashed by politically correct cartoon kids on T.V, who zoom around in space craft (presumably propelled by hot air) saving the Planet, think I'm callous, narrow-minded, selfish and very un-green. But given the choice, on a rainy Monday morning, of walking to school or taking a ride in Mum's Taxi, you can guess which they choose.
Should I ever experience the odd twinge of conscience, I can banish it instantly, by remembering that I spent the first 22 years of my life walking or bussing it. So, until the Government actually ration petrol, I'll be hanging on to my wheels. I've already done my bit for fuel economy and conservation.
Copyright Sally Codman 2004 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
