KEY POINTS:
It's the little things that end relationships. So it is with my Subaru station wagon. Our impending divorce isn't the result of a biggie, like gearbox replacement, but the fact that the remote door locker refuses to function unless inserted in the hole. So it's time for a
change.
It so happened last Monday I was free in the city, having reported to Wellington's High Court for jury service but not passed the ballot.
I'd watched a video by Philip Alpers advising us how to be good jurors and waited patiently while legal discussions took place between judge and counsel. In the event, the trial was abandoned because the accused, charged with sex offences, pleaded guilty.
I guess I wouldn't have made it to the jury - journalist, ex-MP, married to a barrister, and author of books on sex offenders.
But I could have saved the state thousands of dollars just by detecting the whiff of a paedophile and sending down the accused. Interestingly, he came to the same conclusion about himself.
There's no prospect more boring than cooling your heels in the city. To pass time in the jury room I'd caught up on back issues of the Spectator, the medium for some of the world's superior opinion-writing, plus the cleverest cartoons.
For instance: woman in her doctor's surgery being advised she's a bit depressed is given an antidote - a prescription for new shoes. But I've got a dressing room full of Robert Clergeries, Campers, Paul & Joes, and - to the horror of Noelle McCarthy, Jane Clifton and Amanda Millar on National Radio's panel on Monday - Crocs.
Shoe-shopping just wouldn't replace the stimulation of farm life I'd eschewed for the day's civic duty.
I decided to return the numerous phone calls ignored over the past 12 months from "vehicle sales consultant" Andrew, tempting me to test drive the new BMW X5.
But not before lunch. "Another glass of wine, sweetheart?" the QC solicitously offered.
"No, darling," I cautioned, "lest I buy a flash car and charge it to you."
I'd tasted the excitement of the petrol-head Hamilton boy's addiction to automobile power.
In anticipation of farewelling his Aston Martin, I was briefly trusted to drive this glorious beast around Martinborough's back roads. Scarier than riding a highly strung, tightly coiled, finely bred racehorse - one wrong hand or leg movement and it's goodnight nurse.
The BMW X5 brochure promises "purposeful stance, muscular thrust of the bonnet and contoured athletic-looking flanks".
No wonder these 4WDs are so popular with bored Remuera housewives, and how could I seriously consider owning one when I've written so many horrible words against those who career around in them as if they own the blimmin' roads?
Easily, after I'd sat in the driver's seat, the back seat, inspected the engine, folded down the seats to make a station wagon - in fact, everything except take it out for a test drive.
I couldn't do that, not while the dusty, trusty Subaru was sulking within sight and sure to spot me cruising past, nose in the air, in this "alpine white, non-metallic ultimate driving machine".
"Never go down in power," the petrol-head advised that night, so my justifications began in earnest. I need space for the new huntaway pup, hopefully greeting the world in a few weeks, plus the aged Labrador.
There are sacks of pig food to be fetched and saddleback weaners to collect, to be fattened for the spit, plus wheat for the bantams, hay bales for the horse, trailer-loads of firewood to tow, and wine deliveries to restaurants.
And let's face it. There's a certain frisson to be enjoyed from defying the goodie-goods competing in smugness and disowning carbon footprint gas guzzlers in favour of silly little shopping carts with electric engines. My world is an "eco"-, or "smart"-, or "sustainable"-free zone.
I compost, grow my veg and recycle, but I won't be bullied into martyrdom by the climate-change fashionistas.
We're heading for recession? Well, we shall do our bit for the petrol stations, grease monkeys, and tyre merchants by spending large.
Environmental and economic doom and gloom is manna for the anti-fun brigade.
As I head towards old age and the inevitable second babyhood, I'll pass through the non-conformist teenage years on the way, giving the envy merchants something to really get their hemp knickers in a twist about.
Then again, this is a new relationship I'm considering, so maybe I should start out little. Fiat (Fix It Again Tony) has just released a new Bambina. Small but perfectly formed - I wonder how many dogs and pigs it would comfortably transport?
