I got the car serviced the other day. Perhaps unusually, when I went to pick it up, there was no multi-gazillion dollar bill waiting for me; just $197.

But the guy warned me about various symptoms that were evident but not critical yet that may lead to a higher bill the next time. (He sounded like the dentist, actually.) As per usual I just nodded my head and tried to pretend I knew what he was talking about. Front and rear roll stoppers cracked. Yup. Timing case seal leaking. Oooh. Front suspension bushes cracked. Yeah, they can be nasty.

So it sounds like it’ll be ka-ching next time.

Whenever next time is. I know services are meant to be about every six months or 10,000Ks, whichever comes first. But with my small amount of driving, it takes about a year and a half to rack up 10,000 kilometres, and it’s pretty hard trying to convince myself to go to the trouble and expense of a service more frequently. Maybe I should at least learn how to change the oil.

I’ll always need to drive sometimes (if only for my own sanity… PT and a bike just isn’t going to cut it for some trips, not from where I live). Is there a car out there that is reasonably cheap, clean and safe, and is better suited to occasional driving, and thus very occasional servicing? Something that doesn’t mind if it sits in the driveway six days a week?

Ideally the answer would be a shared car, but so far none of the companies (Flexicar and GoGet seem to be the most prominent in Melbourne; are there any others) have put cars into downtown Bentleigh. It’s probably a bit too suburban. (Unlike, say, Richmond — Beth has one parked virtually outside her house.) Indeed, there are car rental outlets that are closer than any of the car sharing locations, which could potentially work, but alas none within walking distance.

No, I guess I’ll just have to put up with the occasional ka-ching huge repair bill.

It’s now just over ten years since Princess Diana died. One thing I didn’t mention in my blog post at the time was that when I got home, I found my VCR, which had been set to tape an obscure Sunday morning TV programme (the rather amusing look at the parables of Jesus, Wrestling With The Big One, with Tony Robinson), had picked up a news bulletin of the accident, from before her death had been announced. It’s kind of erie watching it today.

If nothing else, her death should serve as a reminder to always wear your seatbelt.

(I had thought that crash survivor Trevor Rees-Jones, the bodyguard, was wearing his, but apparently not. But crash analysis did conclude that the injuries would have been minor if the car’s occupants had been wearing theirs.)

I’ve only ever been in one car accident. I was a kid, in the back of the babysitter’s car, when it hit the back of a tray truck at low speed outside our flat in Hotham Street. The tray came through the windscreen. No injuries, but shock.

Thankfully that’s all I’ve ever been involved in, with the exception of a minor carpark bump or two. But it still sticks in my mind.

Perhaps it’s one of the reasons I prefer not to travel by car when there are alternatives.

My car is dark grey. A recent study found that dark-coloured cars are more prone to accidents. In the rain, like this morning, I drive with my lights on, for visibility.

It’s like my friend Merlin, who rides a motorcycle. Where he lives in Canberra, you apparently don’t have to ride with your motorcycle headlight on (or didn’t, when I asked him about it a few years ago). But he said “my bike is road-coloured, so I do”. Sounds fair enough.

But note to self: Turn car lights off when parking.

That way, I won’t get back to it 9 hours later and find the battery flat and have to call the RACV guy and run the motor for a while to get the battery charged again. Like I did tonight.

…

On the bright side, at least I didn’t park it like this, across two parking spaces:

Or go driving like this:

Dishwashers: On the subject of water (I think Andrew or somebody mentioned this a while ago) in last Sunday’s Age M magaziney thing, there was an article noting that dishwashers generally use less water than handwashing. Dishwashers are in the 13 to 20 litre per cycle range, whereas handwashing is up around 40 to 60. Yay — for once you can be lazy and environmentally friendly!

What they don’t appear to mention, however, is ensuring the dishwasher is full before using it. To do that, I’ve bought extra crockery and cutlery as appropriate, so I don’t run out of things between running it every couple of days.

Boomers: Saturday’s Age A2 section (which I’ve only just got around to reading) notes it’s ten years since Mark Davis wrote Gangland, a book I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time. Davis writes now:

Somewhere deep in the fabric of Australian cultural life it is forever 1974. The Whitlam government is still in office. This Day Tonight is still on television. Patrick White has recently won the Nobel Prize. The last fading bars of Eagle Rock echo from the Sunbury stage.
…
Many of the figures who stood out in 1997 as playing a disproportionate role in Australian cultural life by and large continue to do so. Kerry O’Brien, Robert Manne, Peter Craven, Phillip Adams, Christopher Pearson, Anne Summers, Helen Garner, Richard Neville, Keith Windschuttle, Ray Martin, Clive James, P. P. McGuinness, Germaine Greer, Piers Akerman, John Laws, Michelle Grattan, Laurie Oakes, Alan Jones, Gerard Henderson and George Negus are still out there, setting agendas, demarcating standards, creating much of the intellectual and cultural climate. Whatever they breathe out becomes the oxygen of Australian cultural life.

– Turf war; Mark Davis. The Age. Melbourne, Vic.: May 19, 2007. ; p. 12

I know what he means, though he misses the one I like to take potshots at, Barry Humphries. Maybe ‘cos Humphries too old to be a Boomer, born in 1934. Or maybe it’s not the type of cultural influence Davis is looking at.

But it’s a very interesting read, even if I don’t totally agree with all of it. I can’t find it publically online, probably as it’s due to be republished in fuller form in Overland, though it is available in Gulliver/ProQuest.

Parking: I’m not trying to dob people in, but I reckon the local council should send parking inspectors around to schools at morning drop-off time. People parking across driveways; people parking too close to corners; people backing up around corners; people parking (and leaving their cars) in “set-down only” areas. They’d make a fortune.

Crude: ABC TV, tonight 8:30pm.

You don’t have to be a 4WD owner to drive like a moron. Even Prius owners do it sometimes.

The other contender this week was red Mercedes TLH 385, zooming down Jasper Road with at least one indicator and brake light not working, tail-gating and generally driving like a maniac on Wednesday night.

Also seen this week: multi-level parking for bicycles.

I’ve been doing so little driving that it had been a full month since I’d bought petrol. But that came to an end the other night, when the fuel gauge was finally getting very close to the big E.

So I pulled into the nearest service station, a Shell. Despite what they’ve been up to over the years, I still have a soft spot for Shell; they were the petrol stations in the old Lego Town sets when I was growing up, before Octan took over.

I started filling up. Then I noticed I wasn’t pumping Unleaded, but something called Shell Unleaded 95.

Unleaded 95? What was it? 5% ethanol or something? No, that should have been cheaper, and this was actually 6 cents higher. Obviously it was still called Unleaded, so it couldn’t be too different, but what was I pumping into my car?

I pondered what to do. There was no normal Unleaded at this particular pump. And there was another car right behind me, so I couldn’t go back. I decided to try and play it safe and stop at $20 of fuel, then see how the engine reacted.

It seemed to drive okay, which was a relief. When I got home I Googled it. Turns out Unleaded 95 is also known as Shell Premium Unleaded, and is a high-octane version of conventional ULP, allegedly giving better performance.

Like I care. From reading the propaganda about it, I somehow doubt my old “bathtub on wheels” is getting any benefit out of it.

But hey, at least it didn’t screw-up my engine.

What’s the deal with those little car licence plates? Particularly on big cars which have plenty of space for normal licence plates. I seem to see them a lot on SS Commodores and 4WDs.

Surely the point of licence plates is to make cars easily identifiable, in which case allowing smaller plates where they’re not needed makes no sense. I can understand why cars with a smaller spot for the plates might need them (judging from the VicRoads web site they came about because of this being the case with some European models) but why on bigger cars?

Is a small plate on a big car a sign that the driver wants more stylish, minimalist plates, or thinks they stand less of a chance of their number being noted/photographed if they drive like an idiot? Hopefully camera and character recognition technology is such that it doesn’t really matter.

What “Keep left” sign?

Whatdyamean, “Keep Left”?

Tram stop? What tram stop?

It doesn’t apply to me.

I’ll go where I want.

(Sorry about the pic quality.)