Driving Miss Lazy
25/09/2008
The car insurance change
My car usage has changed recently; I now do a daily commute to my place of work and of-course that has changed my annual mileage, so, I must inform my car insurance provider because it will probably affect my motor insurance quote.
Before I started a full time job, I used to walk my daughter to school, but I was lucky enough to have a car for rainy days and afternoons when I had just watched a bit too much Wimbledon and couldn't make it on time - yes, I know that's bad for the planet, but, well, I do like tennis.
And sometimes my daughter would just look at me, with her big blue eyes and say, "Mummy, can we go in the car, please?" and my conviction for eco-world-domination would just go flying out the window.
Not that I'm a push over either. There were plenty of grey, windy mornings when my little darling would leave it to the last minute to get dressed, in the vain hope that I would say, "Oh, we're late now, let's hop in the car."
No! I would think of my cardio-vascular system and say, "Right, we need to walk extra quickly now or you will be marked absent."
Boo, hiss. A 'late mark' is a primary school no-no that carries a certain social stigma. So, my daughter would half pull on a scarf, I would frog-march her out of the door and her poor little legs would go ten-to-the-dozen as she tried to keep up with my speedy adult gait. She would get to school pink-cheeked and breathless and not one minute late.
Of-course, some mornings were better; those sunny spring days where walking would be a joy and we would stop to spy excitedly on squirrels foraging for nuts, or to stroke a friendly ginger cat. There were mornings and afternoons when we played memory and letter games or talked about our favourite foods, holidays, birthday presents. And very occasionally I would buy a treat from the corner shop and we would suck ice-creams as we strolled home, or blew bubblegum bubbles like a couple of teenagers.
But, I also remember, with a pained shudder, the times I had a cold, or had been ironing all afternoon, or was tired from doing mature student Uni studies, and I would have given anything to just let her walk home without me because it was too cold to go out. I remember the days when I didn't own a car and the journey to school always seemed to coincide with an opening of the heavens; we would return home drenched to the skin, cold and miserable. Those were the days when I couldn't wait to be rid of the school-run. I'd done the daily grind with my son, five years her senior and I was fed up of the tyranny of the clock, as it ticked its message of, "It's five to three, you'd better get a move on!"
Now, I work full time and my daughter is preparing to go to High School next year, so we have agreed that due to work needs and her occasional want to be treated like a "big girl" she should walk both ways to school by herself. We have a system of phone calls, so that I know she has reached school and then got home again in the afternoon, and apart from a couple of times where the lure of next door's trampoline has caused her to forget, the system has worked well. She feels like a grown up and consequently, out at work, so do I. It's a win-win situation.
And then I remember a snow-ball fight on a freezing Wednesday in January, and skipping and knock-knock jokes. I remember kissing my children good-bye at the gates and watching their eyes light up as they spot me in the playground. And suddenly, without warning, I miss the walks so very much.
Oh, the grass is always greener isn't it? And I'm sure my daughter feels much the same. There are days she loves her new found responsibility and days when she'd give anything to get in the car. Oh yes, the car, I must sort out my car insurance.
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