The world seems obsessed with the latest, the newest, the best, and the most fashionable... none of which apply to my quirky old car. But it does what I want, gets me where I need to go, fits what I want to carry, and I enjoy driving it. I have to tinker with it to keep it running well, but that’s part of the fun too. Am I missing something? OC
Each of us has things in our lives that are far from perfect, but we love them anyway.
Some of them we marry, others we feed Besbix, others we buy a new strap for, or darn, or faithfully polish - we treasure and nurture them way beyond the limits of logic, and long after their best-by date. Often to the despair of our family and friends.
The object of obsession might be anything from an old cardigan that is so tattered and stretched that it looks like a cross between a dish cloth and a dressing gown (but it’s just-right comfortable); or an old watch with a scratched glass that loses three minutes every day (but it ticks!); or a collection of dents and soot that no-one else seems to recognise is the only frying pan that will cook bacon and eggs just right.
Perhaps you have a particular pair of shoes, or an armchair that your nearest and dearest has been trying to consign to the bonfire for a decade; or a buckled and bruised pair of pliers that has been with you through every household fix-it job since the bed collapsed on your honeymoon.
You can’t plan or invent these eccentric oddments in your life. They just happen to you and grow on you; you acquire them for what they’re good at, you keep them for the faults that become their charm, their quirks become your sentiment, and your faith in them becomes their fidelity.
In a world where technology constantly improves everything, and marketing suggests you compulsively replace old with new, good with better, something in the human psyche craves the mellow, cherishes the familiar. And it picks items - inanimate and otherwise - through which to express this endearment.
Normally we get exasperated by weakness, frustrated by inadequacy, alienated by suffering and failure, and embarrassed by misfit. But in random, inexplicable cases, we suddenly defend the duff, embrace the inefficient, support the shambolic.
Which is perhaps just as well, otherwise the divorce rate would be 100 per cent, mirrors would be banned, and the glue industry would be out of business.
Yes, your old car is missing quite a lot. But the latest, state-of-the-art alternatives are missing something that is perhaps even more precious.
