Month: August 2015

No va va voom: Why I gave up my car

A year ago, I made the decision to give up my car. Well, the decision was sort of made for me. The car had a whole host of minor issues which added together made one big issue and would have cost about five times the car’s value to fix. As I was about to start working in London and would be travelling to work on train every day, I decided give my car to the nice WeBuyAnyCar man and not replace it with another which would be sat outside my flat almost all the time.

Not everyone will be able to give up a car. Some people are in secluded locations and/or may need to make journeys that aren’t well suited to public transport. Some people might need the flexibility or freedom for their job.

I don’t mean to be evangelical or to tell other people that they should do the same as that’s not my thing. My circumstances may change and I may want to get a car again in the future. I just want to share my experience of doing so.

The reaction to giving up my car varied considerably from “You’re crazy” to “Good on you” to “How are you going to give me lifts to football now?”

I felt liberated. I’ve never been a great fan of driving and can never feel relaxed or enjoy it as much as some people seem to be able to. Spending my life on buses and predominantly trains I am able to enjoy the journey a bit more, to read a book and zone out whilst someone takes me where I need to go.

There are added pressures – one of which is that I am always worried about missing public transport so usually turn up far too early. As soon as I’m on board though, it’s time to relax.

Living without a car has prompted me to walk more, which can only be beneficial. Except when it’s raining. Then I get a bit grumpy. The weather has not really been an issue though. I’ve not got completely drenched at any point and I’ve learnt to deal with a bit of drizzle.

Financially I am much better off. I estimated the costs of insurance, road tax, petrol, MOT, repairs and purchasing a car to be around £120 per month for the journeys I was making. Most of my journeys were those I could have walked and I was only driving out of laziness. When I make the same journeys now, they are either on foot or bus, with the bus journeys I make costing under £5 each.

One main issue is doing my shopping. I had to change my mindset and my habits. At first I went into the supermarket and put as much in my trolley as I would have done previously. I then struggled to carry four bags of shopping home. Now, I am visiting the shops every other day, buying less in one go and often having more fresh food. It would be nice to be able to get a big weekly shop all done in one go but the change isn’t too onerous.

There have been occassions when I’ve needed a car. I’ve been insured on my dad’s car since I gave up mine, and also on my girlfriend’s more recently. I therefore have access to one when I really need it (assuming I can borrow one without imposing). These instances are infrequent, though. I am lucky as I live in a small town and almost anywhere I want to go is walkable in under half an hour.

The environmental impact of not owning a car also allows me to be a little bit smug about not harming the world whilst also benefiting myself as well. And I quite like being smug.

I may not have convinced you to give up your car, and as I stated, that wasn’t my aim. But think about this: If you have no car, there’s no chance of getting caught in Operation Stack.

What’s in a name?

I was named after Rod Stewart from the popular beat combo The Faces. However, my dad decided that Stewart rather than Rod would be a more appropriate name. I am inclined to agree with him.
I’ve often thought that if I had children, I’d want to name them after a literary character. There’s some sort of romantic part of me that thinks entwining your child’s name with that of a literary character will somehow magically endow them with all the good qualities of that character or some sort of cool mystique. However, unfortunately Atticus does not go well with my surname.
The Royal Me

I imagine that they would feel some sort of attachment to the book that they might otherwise not feel, and therefore live their life virtuously and treat the literary character as a role model. Having said this, the first time I had consciously sat down to listen to Rod Stewart’s music was the start of last year and I imagine my child would be as lazy as me and not get around to learning about their namesake until they are in their 30s.
Stewart can also be spelt (incorrectly) as Stuart. Unfortunately the misspelling is also the more common name. When my brother was considering calling his new born child Emaline, my dad criticised him for thinking about giving his child a name that would always be misspelt. I started coughing at this point with my father protesting that when he gave me the name he didn’t realise it could be spelt another way.
I am quite proud of the way my name is spelt. There are not too many others of us (Stewart Lee and Stewart Downing being two examples) but I think we’re fiercely proud of the way the name is spelt. It’s a common enough name but with a unique twist.
It amused me greatly in my old job where my email address was my full name that people would have to spell it correctly to find my email address and then start the email addressing me as “Stuart.” I think this is probably the reason why I pay extra attention when writing someone’s name because it always makes me feel a little bit more special when someone gets mine correct.

I get a bit annoyed when American TV shows have characters called Stuart on them. The way they pronounce the name is horrid. It’s like “Stourt” or something. I find it painful to listen to. Stewie from Family Guy is fine though. Not only does the pet name suggest that he spells his name correctly, but in the first couple of seasons he was a ruthless genius and this is something I aspire to be. I have a couple of items of clothing with Stewie Griffin on them. One is a baseball cap which I was wearing on holiday in America. A musician who wanted me to buy his CD yelled out to me “Hey Stewie!” It took me a good few seconds to work out how he knew my name.

One great thing about my name – and it took me 25 years to realise this – is that, when shortened to Stew, it can replace you in any song. Every singer in the world is then literally singing about me. Stewart Lee worked this out too, but is more subtle naming his shows things such as A Room With A Stew.

Once you get past the major problems of having a name with an uncommon spelling – never being able to get novelty mugs with your name on being the biggest one – it becomes more of a badge of honour having to put up with misspellings. After the age of around 6, I accepted that I would often receive birthday cards with someone else’s name on and I learnt to deal with it.  I think the disappointment of this put me in good stead for disappointment later in life that would be caused by the performance of the England Footballs Team.
I have always been told that Stewart is the Scottish way of spelling the name. This suits me and seems to be a way of connecting with my heritage as legend has it that my great-great-great-grandfather Anderson was originally Scottish and sailed down via Ireland before settling on the Kentish coast. However, when I went to Edinburgh Castle earlier this year, we found a sign with “The Royal House of Stewart”  and whilst getting a photo of me in front of it, one of the members of staff informed me that it wasn’t actually the Scottish spelling. I have just found the below on Wikipedia:

Stuart is a traditionally masculine given name as well as a surname. It is the French form of the surname Stewart. The French form of the surname was brought to Scotland from France by Mary Stuart, in the 16th century.
As we all know, Wikipedia is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so I think that settles that matter. Further internet research suggests that the Mary Queen of Scots changed it from Stewart to Stuart to ensure the French could pronounce it correctly as they would usually render “w” as “v”.
Be proud of your name, no matter what it is, especially if it is unique. It makes you special.

We are sailing…

 Last week I went on holiday to Scandanavia with my girlfriend and did possibly the coolest thing I will ever do in my life. We were part of the crew on a Viking ship.

Other people sailing far at sea
When I say crew, I might be exaggerating slightly. It’s not as if we were hired and paid in plunder. We weren’t recruited by a fearsome leader for our brute strength and ruthlessness. What happened was a little more mundane.
We got to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (pronounced Rosh-kill and more commonly known for the music festival which I had previously thought was called RockSlide) after a circuitous route through the town. Getting to the ticket desk, the enthusiastic Danish man asked us if we wanted to go on the Viking sail boat for 95 krone. He was so enthusiastic about it that I instantly thought “Of course I do!” but I looked at Jo to see if she wanted to spend that much money on it. She looked at me to see if I would be comfortable doing it despite being unable to swim and being terrified of drowning. After a while we concluded that yes, we both definitely wanted to do it and we booked our time slot.
Check out the glee on my little face
So we joined around 15 other tourists at the appointed time for a safety briefing with the captain of our ship. I don’t think that was her official term but I’ve forgotten her name. She told us that we’d all be wearing life jackets but they probably weren’t needed as no one had fallen in during the 25 years they’d been open which reassured me. It’s quite odd – I’ve got a fear of water that I’m able to give over after about 10 minutes on a boat. I’ve been on narrowboat holidays where I’ve been clambering around the outside of the boat, jumping assure and pushing off and jumping onto a boat, yet I still have an initial fear that I’m going to fall in and drown.
The captain also told us that we would need to do some rowing which excited me because it felt like a more authentic experience, and it excited Jo as she is a rower and it was a chance to try out rowing in a different boat.
As we were excited, we were the first ones onto the ship and we got to sit at the back of the boat which has a technical term that I forgot in my excitement. This meant that we were rowing what Jo has told me is called stroke, meaning that all the other rowers should follow our pace.
Having never rowed before, it took me a little while to get the hang of what I was supposed to be doing. During this learning phase, we went slightly off course and almost crashed into some moored boats at the side of the harbour. Reading this and knowing that the other rowers should be following my pace would suggest that it was my fault that we nearly crashed. I would like to submit my case to the jury thusly:
The woman behind me was rubbish. I had to repeatedly stop rowing as our oars would hit eat other. She was clearly not following my lead as she should have been. The only time my side of the ship were in time was when I looked back to see what she was doing and to follow her although this synchronisation was brief with her soon falling out of time again. It frustrated me a bit. She never would have made it as a Viking. She didn’t even have the beard for it.
Jo with the win through her hair and a sail in front of her
After a while we were out at sea and go to hoist the sail. As we were in the prime position, at different times myself and Jo both got to do important rope holding tasks. I was excited by this. Even though it mostly consisted of just holding a rope for about 10 minutes, there was a period at the start of pulling on the rope and at the end of slowly letting it out. As you can tell, I am easily pleased.
I was also selected by the captain (it may have just been that I was the nearest but I like to think that I was selected) to lower the sail. I got a bit confused by this as I thought if I lowered it, that it would fall straight into the sea or onto people. I had forgotten that this probably wasn’t the first time that they had lowered a sail on a Viking ship and they probably had a tried and tested method for doing so as I marvelled as the sail lowered itself perfectly between where the crew was sat.
Whilst we were sailing, the captain was warning us that we might have to row back in. I was really hoping we would get to do so as, whilst sailing was neat, we wouldn’t get the full Viking experience if we sailed straight back into port as they were doing later in the day.
As I have mentioned, this is perhaps the coolest thing I will ever do in my life and if you ever get the chance to visit Roskilde (just half an hour from Copenhagen on train), I urge you to do so. The rest of the museum is fun too – you can care your name in runes, paint a shield or sword and many other activities that are probably aimed at children as well as see the ruins from 5 Viking boats that were recovered last century.