Wendyl Nissen: Forget ... and forgive

I am beginning to think our car is trying to run away from us. Several months ago, the Chariot spent a night and a day outside a Ponsonby cafe after I forgot to take it home. For a while we had no idea where it was and assumed someone had stolen it - until I remembered where I had left it.

It was an emotional reunion and I swore that I would never ever forget it again. I wrote about the event in this column and have since had many people seek me out to share their own tales of things they have forgotten. Nine times out of 10 it turned out to be babies.

Apparently, it is not uncommon for mothers of new babies to have a coffee with a friend, then get up and walk home, leaving the baby in the pushchair at the cafe.

My mother did this once, except she left the baby in the hospital where she had just delivered him. I'm sure it is a recognised condition with a medical name - possibly Common Sense Syndrome - and I think it has probably got something to do with new mothers responding to the voice in their head shouting: "Run while you can!"

The problem with forgetting things is that those that are forgotten can end up quite liking their freedom. This is what I think has happened to the Chariot. Since the last disappearance it has been retired from service after the arrival of a much flasher car in the form of a Prius Hybrid.

The Hybrid now occupies the prime parking spot on the street outside, it does most of the heavy-duty driving around town and - there is no other way to describe it - it's just really flash and I love it.

Under most new-car circumstances, the old car, as in the Chariot, would have been retired with dignity, but my Hybrid is just on loan as I busily work as an ambassador for my sponsor, Giltrap City Toyota, helping people understand how a hybrid works.

So far I think I have managed to sell one to my local pharmacist. Most days I return to my car to find a group of men poking and prodding it, looking for the retractable extension cord I use to plug it into mains power at night.

They are usually older men who associate cars with the petrol engine and find themselves unable to believe that a car can run on anything else.

So, much to my husband's horror, I find myself talking cars with these men, explaining that it runs on petrol and electric power. The petrol engine charges the electric battery (no need to plug it in at night) and delivers huge savings on petrol and CO2 emissions. By that time they are wandering off to the RSA or bowls before I've even touched on the solar panels in the roof.

But while my love affair with the Hybrid is legendary in my house, there have been hiccups.

I yelled at it recently when the alarm went off and then increased in intensity, causing me to pull off to the side of the road expecting the whole thing was about to burst into flames.

I finally managed to work out that it thought my handbag on the passenger seat was a person refusing to put on a seatbelt.

"You oversensitive, high-tech moron," I screeched.

And the Hybrid never comes to lunch. This is because there is a high possibility I will need to walk home from lunch and leave the car in Ponsonby, and for that job the Chariot is less likely to invite a break-in on a Friday night.

It is the poorest of the poor cousins in the stolen vehicles family.

"Have you seen the Chariot?" I asked my husband, unable to locate it on the street, sulking behind the Hybrid as it usually does.

"You took it to lunch on Monday," he said pointedly. It was now Friday.

"Are you telling me that we have left it on Ponsonby Rd for four days and nights? Does no one care enough about that car to bother to go and pick it up?" I said, accusingly.

"Talk to the Hybrid," was all he said, before suggesting that I might like to change the habit of a lifetime and walk to lunch rather than from, and drink sensibly so that I might be in a state to drive the Chariot home.

Which I did, muttering apologies all the way to the Chariot, which seemed rather proud of itself for only getting a $15 parking ticket.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY