The Mummy Car

I have to take everything out of the Ford Galaxy.  I find sweet wrappers (expected), old apple cores (suspected), the odd mouldy sandwich (dreaded).  I also discover spare gloves and a bottle of sun lotion – to keep my tribe safe both in winter and summer.  There are road maps so old that the Icknield Way is marked in dotted lines as a road under development.  In the pocket, an audiotape of “Three Men in a Boat” and a Paloma Faith CD.  Next to them is my Latin dictionary. And let’s not forget the strong, leak-resistant plastic bag in case of vomit incidents. 

I put them all in a holdall, these items telling the story of six years of family life, then I heft them into my beat-up Fiesta, and drive away, abandoning the Galaxy at the Garage. 

I have had a nasty prang on the way to work – my fault – and the Galaxy has been written off.

I don’t look back, but I have a lump in my throat. 

The Galaxy has been my mother ship.  The car before it was a Galaxy, and the car before that. Capacious, big enough to separate squabbling children, big enough to take our massive tent (the tent looked smaller in the showroom, I tell you), big enough to shift the children’s junk to university.

But nowadays, there is often nobody in the car besides Nigel and I, so we have decided to put the insurance money towards a second-hand Ford Focus.  Yet again, life has become more streamlined.