At last Ð I can join the ranks of the 10 G begrudgers

Date Published: {J}

Phew! I’m thanking my lucky stars that 2009 has finally come to an end . . . and that’s not because of the absolutely awful Summer, the floods and frost of the past few weeks, the business of picking your way along the frozen footpaths, and now the apparent threat of the return of the floods.

No, it’s because my 09G registration is finally ‘an old car’ and, hopefully, those resentful stares will end at the traffic lights.

So, while the Summer was awful, and the Christmas period conspired to keep us indoors for fear of falling and breaking our collective backsides, I have that even more persuasive reason to be cheerful at the end of the year and the dawning of a new one.

You see, last January I had the idea of buying a car with a 09 G registration, little thinking that it would turn me into something akin to a hate figure. I found myself ‘standing out’ at junctions and if I could lip read, I have no doubt there would have been a few expletives in there in the passing conversation between drivers and passengers as they looked sideways at the 09 plate.

Honestly, in 09 I got more dirty looks at traffic lights, snarls at roundabouts, and ‘go on . . . I dare you’ stares at junctions!

There were times when I looked in my passengers’ seats to see if, by any chance, Michael Fingleton, Seanie Fitzpatrick, the former boss of FAS, or any of the directors of the Bank of Ireland or Allied Irish Banks, had slipped in beside me unbeknownst.

Honestly, I don’t have a house in Spain, I don’t disappear to Mustique on holidays . . . and no, I won’t be in the High Court trying to explain how I was once a handy blocklayer who eventually stuck AIB for a billion-plus.

No such luck. Anytime I was a few days late with paying the minimum on my credit card, I always got that snotty letter telling me how sorry they were, but my next purchase might cause embarrassment.

The 09 resentment and anger was reserved for this old codger driving a 1.4 engined car that Jeremy Clarkeson and The Stig would regarded as a bit of a joke for their speed needs, and The Stig would have been lucky to take around their track in two minutes.

However, in the angry and resentful times in which we live, anyone in the past year in any of the maybe four thousand 09 G cars which were eventually registered, was in danger of being ostracised from decent society.

By which I mean the ordinary run-of-the-mill people who simply use their cars to drive to work, or for ‘tootling about the town’, who have no need of 2-litres, who wouldn’t know a twin overhead camshaft from a Morris Minor, and whose dream would be to actually have a car paid off before it packs up!

From the stares at the lights, and the glares at the 09 plate, you would imagine mine was a Bugatti Veyron. Listen, this thing is a 1.4 Civic Hybrid. In other words, an electric motor kicks-in when you stop at lights, to make sure that it is as parsimonious with petrol as the unreformed Scrooge was with his Christmas greetings.

Thomas The Tank Engine, or a butterfly on speed, would give off more CO2 than this creature. Its carbon footprint is that of a newborn infant. It would be the kind of car John Gormley would take to bed with him instead of a security blanket.

The road tax is €104 per annum. If the Green Party had their way, we would all be driving this sort of car. From my point of view – and 90% of my driving is done in and around Galway – it is perfect. I ain’t going to be ‘crashing any lights’ with it. My joy at the lights is that the clever little thing knocks off the engine and simply runs on electric batteries for maybe the 30 seconds.

The upshot of all this is that I put petrol in it once every 15 days – about €40 worth. Given that it’s such a ‘green machine’ why all the dirty looks . . . but now I can join the rest, given that a few 10G cars have begun to put in an appearance on the roads. It was a positive joy to see the first one in recent days and realise that ‘the heat was off’ and I now had ‘an old car’.

Now, I will be able to sit in my 09 at the junction at the courthouse and glare at the 10G cars that pass. Last week it appeared that maybe three or four hundred of these machines were already on the Galway roads . . . from now on at the junction, I will be as sanctimonious as the crowd going home from the Annual Novena.

You know the crowd. They have been an hour singing hymns, craw-thumping, praying, listening to sermons on the Christian virtues – which surely must include yielding the odd time at a busy junction! – and minutes later they wouldn’t let you filter into a lane of traffic if you promised to get them a double plenary indulgence in Medugorje.

The others are the ones who are concentrating so hard on the road ahead that you know they simply don’t see you! Not half! The most delicious moments of such a confrontation is when they realise that they recognise you. Then they have the awful dilemma of still pretending not to see you . . . or else that sheepish moment when they wave you out into the traffic.

Now that 2010 has arrived, I will sit in ‘my old car,’ glare at the 10Gs and protest aloud as to where they got the money . . . it’s payback time as I join the swollen ranks of the begrudgers.