A Car is not a Necessity
I should have written this review yesterday, but instead I took a trip to a neighboring town, sitting at the front on the top deck of a double-decker bus, watching swathes of black clouds bringing sleet and flurries of snow over the south of England, seeing patches of blue sky in the distance, and realising that life without a car definitely has its advantages.
I live without a car for the simple reason that I have never learned to drive. Perhaps the fact that my father never had a car either, always cycling to work, had something to do with that although I have never learned to cycle either (or to swim, but that's another matter). I never thought twice about walking to school and back; in fact I enjoyed strolling home with my friends and chatting nineteen to the dozen with them. When vacation time came, we always relied on trains and I still enjoy train journeys today. Summer vacations usually meant a long train journey from Portsmouth up to Chesterfield, crossing London on the way, and taking train rides out into the Peak District on fine days to walk up hills and along dales. I would love to repeat the experience now. Later on we ventured as far as Scotland, and I have more recently been for a holiday in the Lake District by National Express coach.
My college days were spent in Manchester, and I remember sending a trunk filled with my belongings separately by rail. I lived in the suburbs and the bus journey into the city centre was quite a lengthy one, but I just took that for granted and it didn't stop me from staying late in town and going for a drink with my fellow students. After graduating I moved to the little town of Southport which offered few job opportunities, so I commuted to Liverpool where I worked for about fifteen months. I had to walk to Southport railway station very early in the morning and again from Liverpool station down to the Royal Liver Building, but it was nothing compared to my walks to and from school, and the lunch hour would usually find me out of the office, traipsing round Liverpool shopping centre.
My life without a car has by no means been confined to England. The next couple of years I spent working in Paris, but I was lucky enough to be able to find a small apartment within walking distance of the office in Place d'Iena. I can just remember once not feeling well enough to walk home, but there was a taxi rank just the other side of the square so that problem was easily solved. The weekends, and sometimes the evenings, saw me exploring other areas of Paris but I thought nothing of travelling alone on the metro, even close to the midnight hour. Whether I would feel as safe nowadays I am reluctant to say, but nothing untoward ever happened to me back in the late seventies. I'm sure travelling by metro in Paris must be considerably easier than driving around and searching for a parking space.
Next stop, and a lengthy one, was Cairo, which presented more of a problem. I had an over-protective Egyptian husband who didn't believe in letting me venture out on my own in the teeming city, especially as I did not speak any Arabic when I first went there. He initially accompanied me everywhere himself, but when I began working full time at the American University in Cairo it was not always possible for him to pick me up when I finished work. He began sending the 'Man Friday' from his office to accompany me home by taxi. Having been so independent in Paris, the whole arrangement frustrated me and I didn't feel that it could carry on permanently. I used to spend a period of a good few weeks every summer in England, and I decided that my best bet was to have some driving lessons whilst there one year. I was, however, thwarted as I discovered that I was expecting my second child; it did not seem the best time to be learning to drive. It was almost as though I was meant not to.
Life without a car hasn't restricted me personally as far as I can see, but I have to admit that life with two young children would probably have been much easier with a car. I must have spent a small fortune on taxis during our summer vacations. When it came to the time that both my sons had started school and I was teaching at the same school myself, my husband decided that the most practical solution was to buy another car and hire a driver; this was Cairo, remember, and there is no comparison between the remuneration for a driver there and a chauffeur in the western world. Money was not limitless, however, and it meant that the driver finished his day's work once we were home and it was therefore difficult for us to go out during the evenings or at weekends. My sons' social life suffered because of this, and I did at that time regret not having learned to drive earlier in my life, perhaps while I was in Paris. That said, whether my husband would actually have allowed me to drive is another matter. Anyone who has visited Cairo knows that driving there is a crazy world of cars interweaving regardless of traffic lanes; one of the first things I always noticed on visits to England was how civilized driving was.
When my almost-adult sons and I came to live in England a few years ago I was once again relieved to feel that at least getting from place to place would not be a problem. For the first three years we lived in Southsea where it is easy to walk to many of the places we needed to get to but also easy to find buses or trains if we wished to go further afield. I then spent five years on the outskirts of Havant, a small town not far from Portsmouth. Before moving there I was aware that there was a local bus service, but once I had moved I was somewhat dismayed to discover that the last bus from Havant to where I lived was at around 5pm and that there were no buses at all on Sundays. I got used to organizing my life accordingly, and it was not too far to walk to the nearest railway station if I wanted to go further afield during the evening or on a Sunday.
Now I'm back in Southsea and it's such a pleasure to be able to walk to and from work and feel that this is at least helping me to keep fit. There is a shopping precinct and a supermarket within walking distance, and I avoid the need for taxis by doing a little food shopping on my way home from work every day. If I feel like meeting up with my sons and having a meal out, there is a huge choice of restaurants nearby, and the cinema is just a short bus ride away. I could hop on a train to go to London or take a cross channel ferry from Portsmouth and have a day out on the north coast of France without having to pay to take a car along.
Without having to pay... that phrase reminds me how often I hear people complaining about the cost of car insurance, road tax, petrol and so on. I don't have to worry about any of those, and I don't have to worry about my car breaking down, or how I would change a flat tyre. It must be easier to sit at a bus stop and wait for a bus, surely? I can also recall the countless times that I've heard drivers complain about the amount of time it sometimes takes them to find a place to park.
Having lived in three different countries, brought up children, worked, and had something of a social life, I don't think anyone can say that life without a car has deprived me of a wealth of experience. On the contrary, old friends of mine who drive but have always lived in Portsmouth seem to think that my life has been more interesting and varied than theirs has. I think I might have to agree on that one.
