Being a good Neighbour

As I walked passed my car this morning on my way to work, I noticed a flyer stuffed underneath my car’s windscreen. It said “We offer cash for old cars for banger racing”. Now, it is not uncommon for all the cars in the street to have flyers on their windscreens but in this case my car was definitely singled out – no other car had a flyer on it.

I have thought for a number of years that our house lets the street down when it comes to cars. Not for us the company-provided Mercs, Audis, Saabs or BMWs, instead we buy the most commonly sold cars like Corsas and Focuses. We also tend to buy near-new cars where the previous single owner was the manufacturer. We then keep them even if a qualified welder is required to keep the car from falling apart. Only if they breakdown twice in a year do we replace them. We do this because we want to spend as little time and money on cars. If they do the job and are reliable then that’s fine.

When I first read the flyer I thought the person who put it there was being very conscientious. Looking for bangers in my neighbourhood is not low-hanging fruit and our street is off the beaten track.

Then a friend said that it was, perhaps, a stunt by my neighbours to hint that it was time I considered buying a new car. Surely it couldn’t be? I thought they liked seeing my little old Corsa squeezed between their BMW X5 and Audi Q7. It makes their cars look even bigger and shinier. And the flyer looked too well done to be a one-off stunt. But with home desk-top publishing so easy maybe it was. Unfortunately, the binmen have already taken my recycling away. The evidence has gone.