Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The carbon footprint buster.... ok the cars knackered...

Here's an experiment come experience starting Friday of last week which was the 24th of July 2009.

We have been wanting to "lose" the car for a few years now, well I have but the wife, bless her (organic) cotton socks thinks too much about me and my bad back to let me get away with ditching it for good.
Anyway it's that time of year again when the car insurance is due and the renewal came through t'other day for £292. 70 pence which for a beast of a car I have, a 2.6 auto omega ( like a 150 mph [allegedly] sports saloon ) I was well chuffed but at the same time reading the "terms and conditions" which said the cost included a " policy issuing fee" of £25.00 OK so they print out the insurance certificate and all the bumf, parcel it up in a nice quality envelope and send it out by courier to my address at a time suitable to me.... fat chance, they bung it all in a PDF, attach it to an email and tell me to print it out so I've emailed them telling them I'm not renewing because of this.
So here I was doing a bit of shopping on Friday and the emissions light came on the dash and the engine sounded like a bag of hammers so I limped it home and put it in the garage because that sounds like the crank case sensor needs replacing which it did a few years ago and then it cost around £345.

Also the car also needs servicing at around £180 and like many others about these days we barely have 2 pennies to rub together so we decided to let the insurance go for now and lock the car away in the garage for a few months.

If you think about it here is a bit of work needed on the car, which is only 6 years old by the way and it is going to cost around £800 !!


The dog needs an operation on his back at about £300 and as we have no money now is the opportune moment to ditch the car hence the chance to experience life without a motor for as long as i can do it.

We are constantly bombarded by media, government, quango's, environmentalists etc about cutting our carbon footprint so this experiment will see what i can achieve much like the plastic reduction one in January.

Friday the 31st of July.

One week into the no car use and it's terrifyingly simple...... Painful, weary making and laboriously long times spent doing what i would class as nothing when I could be doing something else but we haven't used the car.

I have a bus pass and use that frequently and when the boss is with me we get a day pass for her which saves 20p over 2 journeys but obviously we would save more if we used it more during the day.
Shopping is a pain as it has had to be done daily because i made the mistake of "forgetting" I was going on the bus and got a lot of shopping. Thankfully a couple of people helped me put the shopping on the bus which the driver was cool about and I phoned my wife to meet me at the bus stop so she brought the bike trailer round and we got the shopping home OK. a salutary lesson learnt there... always remember what you are doing.

Like the reduced plastic shopping it takes time and effort not having a car. You have to wait for buses, sit with screaming kids, whinging old folk and then get jostled about in ques but all for the sake of the environment..... and saving money...

Still the week has gone OK, I have noticed I've taken more pain relief medication but then I've done more effort.

I think the bus is going to be a goer as they say and that got me thinking because we had planned a few days out seeing it is the summer holidays et al. The car forced the issue but there was me thinking we were stay at our own town again for holidays as we didn't have a car but then I got to thinking about making it a challenge to see if we could get a few days out, at low cost, as we have no money which, if I'm honest is the main reason we are not using the car.

I found out that if you plan ahead then the savings can be quite good. I used to go to Te*co's and saved the club card deals so these have to be used by the end of Aug 09. Hence we are going to apply for tickets to the york dungeons and one of those bus rides round york whilst also visiting the railway museum. Hopefully these clubcard vouchers will be accepted, I haven't looked at it yet but we hope to have a good day out in York for very little money by combining offers. I have a disabled train pass which saves a third off the fairs and a second adult can go at the same price so the ticket cost will be around £10 for both of us after discount, the free entries for clubcard vouchers will hopefully pan out and if so we have a get on and off bus ride to see different parts of york for nothing.

Apart from the train fare it looks like we will only need to pay for food but as the newest TV chef, Valentine Warner says " do a picnic in a Loaf.... An ingenious idea and one I plan to do.


4TH August

Got the disabled train pass today. It cost £18 but for two of us to go to Newcastle metro centre tomorrow and then york next week we will be saving £17.52... more or less paid for itself straight away. One other thing on the above post about getting the tour bus to save money, On the national rail site here you can get cheap bus passes for certain areas of the country if you buy one at the same time as the train ticket. Unlimited day ticket type pass and it was going to be £3 for the York one which is a lot cheaper than the tourist buses.

We went to visit the in laws yesterday and although they only live 4 miles away it took us two buses and 40 minutes at a cost of £6.80 return for one person. Having said that we got my wife a day pass for £2.90 so saving nearly £4. This is not quite half a gallon of petrol for my beast of a car so in monetary terms it was cheaper to do it by car until you add in the hidden costs of motoring like road tax, wear and tear, servicing etc.

It took 40 minutes and 2 buses each way but we were able to go into the shopping centre and have a cup of coffee and a few minutes to ourselves just reading a newspaper or looking in the library which I haven't been in for years... It was quite impressive also.

I think the buses are a goer...

One thing we didn't have to buy when shopping is garlic,lol. I lifted the last of the garlic yesterday and in all i have over 400 bulbs now and we have been eating home grown garlic for a couple of months now. When I say eating
I mean eating. There is nothing better than pureeing a couple of cloves of garlic and spreading it on a slice of home made brown bread with real butter.... heaven.

12th August

The dog had his op last week, £238 and is doing well, in fact he's not phased by any of it. As a result he had to go for a check up on Monday the 10th and as he's getting on a bit the two miles to the vets and back would have been too much for his hips. Without the car we decided to get the bus into town and walk home most of the way but he enjoyed the bus ride not one bit. He has the propensity to expect a fuss off everyone he sees so as you can gather a bus full of potential fusses and not one did he get... oh the simple life of a dog. Anyway, he had his check up and everything is OK with the stitches.

Oh it cost 20p for the dogs bus fare....

Like the plastic reduction trials at the beginning of the year on this blog being without a car takes it's toll and time becomes a premium.. better not tell tesco or they will package it and sell it as tesco finest... Time, the tesco finest type or this is no ordinary time, this is M&S Time.......

I don't think it is possible to do without supermarkets in a town if you don't have a car. It could be possible to do without them for the plastic reduction topic where you can spend a bit more time shopping at small shops but, from memory the effort I had to put in back in January couldn't be done without a car. I guess in a village setting with full amenities it would be possible but then they don't have buses to the town...

17th of August.

OK so we are about 3 weeks in to the no car experiment and it's as if we have never had a car..... Sad in a way as I've had a car every day since November the 18th 1978 when I past my driving test except for 2 weeks back in 1999 when we sold one car and the next one wasn't ready.

I reckon the time taken to change our lifestyle in a big way will be between 3-6 weeks. I found it easier with the no plastic after about 3 weeks I seem to remember and this week has been the tipping point for the car. I will need to drive again in October when I take my wife to the theatre to see the river dance thingy as that is in Sunderland and there are no buses or trains between our town and Sunderland after 10 pm, 9 pm for trains so I'll need to way up the idea of hiring a car, looking for a shared lift or getting a weeks insurance for my car for that day. The tickets were bought for my wife by our son for Christmas otherwise we would not have booked them if we were without a car. In future it will be a decision to make where we want to go somewhere and the first search will be the transport requirements. If they don't fit then it would be a case of not going.
Having said that we are Hartlepool United FC supporters and we have always chose to go to away matches in the car except the dodgy ones like Leeds United and Darlo if they ever get into our league again,lol. The main reason is because my wife says so and the reasons are like stopping for breaks when we want, shared driving, less time on the road etc but she came out with a comment the other day after the draw for the next round of the Carling Cup. We got Burnley at home but she said she would rather have an away match at the likes of Middlesborough or Newcastle. i retorted how would we get to those matches then ? to my astonishment here reply was ON THE BUS... with a sneer of sarcasm... The astonishment was due to the fact she was talking about the football supporters buses...

So the upshot is that my wife, faced with having no car and a love of football she is prepared to "slum it" with the rest of us to see her beloved team in action.... Yes.. goodbye Car...

21st August 2009

Nearing the end of the month without the car now and it is starting to take it's toll. I had to the doctors yesterday to have my bloods done. Our surgery has done a "well man clinic" for over 12 years now and all this is, is where you give or rather the vampires take an arm full of blood and send it off for the lab rats to play with then I, as a hypochondriac have to suffer for 10 days until the results come back to tell you that you are OK..

Well it was that time of year again last October and I sort of "forgot" about it until December when they kept telephoning me to book an appointment. All this is in the aid of preventative medicine as it picks up anything like rises in your sugar etc. Anyway, done that and everything was OK but since December I've lost 22 kilo in weight through consistent effort and good food intake, which for that read stop eating 6 fried egg sarnies at one sitting or a full box of jaffa cakes at one go or things like that. My favourite diet song has to be Peter Gabriel's " No self control", lol.
Soooo, for those still in English this is over 3 stone in 8 months so I'm well chuffed but now the doctors have decided that in the aid of "preventative treatments " they will test everyone between the ages of 40 and 64 to see what %age risk you are of coronary heart disease. Like I want to know if I'm 75% at risk of a heart attack ?? Some might but I'd worry so much that I'd get stressed out and have a heart attack...

So the vamps took the blood and now I have to wait until the 1st of September for the results...
Now what has this got to do with not having the car? A lot as I had to walk down to the surgery as the buses were not on at a good time for me. So I set off and it took me nearly an hour and a half to walk 3/4 of a mile, totally knackered with the back pain when I got there out of breath, blood pressure through the roof and nauseous with the pain and I'm on morphine tablets now so imagine the amount of pain I was in...

Still had the sense to get the bus back but even then I had to walk about 200m back home. Done absolutely nothing today except sleep, wake up take some more pain relief then sleep again.

I know I could have got a taxi from door to door but I didn't have the £5.40 that would cost so the loss of the car has been rough over the last two days but hey ho I'll be back to normal whinging and whining tomorrow...


25th of August

Recovering from the missive above, boy does it take it's toll ! Been rather subdued as I'm in a lot of pain and we need some shopping so even though I said I'd never do it I've decided to have a look at online food shopping so just looking for a free delivery coupon / code for Asda then I'll be sorted.

The %age risk of a heart attack turned out to be 10%, lol. 


29th April 2010


The car was still out of commission until March 2010 when we finally saved the money up for the repairs to the car. It turned out to be the coil packs, the distributor caps, plug leads and spark plugs in old money but that cost the thick end of £380. We got to use the car between the 25th of March and the 9th of April when the test ran out. Got the car tested on the 25th of April and it needed an exhaust..... £500.76p so we have used the car for less than 2600 miles in the last full test year and it's cost us about £1600 !!

Without the car on a long term takes it's toll. There is no doubt what so ever in my mind that I need a car or a lot more money.  On average wqe spent around £50 a month on transport such as taxi's and train but that would have been a lot more if I'd used a taxi every time I went out. Thankfully I have the spacka bus pass but whilst this is free, which is good you need to pick and choose the drivers and buses you use or the bouncing about shags up the back even more.

On the whole I think I will be selling the car as soon as possible because there will be another repair bill soon and thern the car will be off the road again until we save the money up. 

Monday, July 20, 2009

like a bus...

Just like a number 6 bus, never one when you need one then two come together.....

After the recent bad weather we have had I spent some of today looking over the veg patch mrs T has created and oh what a sorry sight. Garlic is well covered in rust now so that has been dug up and the onions have all but been blown out of the ground so many of them have had to be lifted. Mind you that was no effort really as they were blown out of the soil over the weekend. So I have over 200 garlic plants and about 70 red onions to sort out now...

On another board I frequent people will still believe the state will look after them.... fools.

It's all stemmed from the swine flu pandemic that we have here in the UK. I'm on the paranoid side full of conspiricy theories and doom and gloom and there are others who think that when everything hits the fan the NHS, fire, police etc will have a "moral and ethical duty" to go to work to ensure we all are kept safe.... hmmm...

All I can say is I have my food and water stockpiled to last about 4 weeks at the moment with more to come.....

Saturday, July 18, 2009

where does time go?????

Sorry for not updating this blog for the last 2 months... Just where does time go ?

Old age or a dodgy back certainly helps blur one day into the other but I am ashamed at not updating this as I seemed to start off so well,lol.

So over the last 2 months what has been happening in the chez teather household?
Well i was expecting the son home from uni for a freebie 6 months before going back to uni in september but along with 6 of his friends they have got another house to share so it now looks as if he has moved out completly... heaven...

Went to the download festival which for the oldies reading this it is the renamed monsters of rock at donnington. Hard going with the back but the facilities for the disabled provided by live nation were absolutly phernominal... really pleased. I doubt i'd go again for health, money, mobillity issues but if you have a son / daughter who wants ot go then you can let them go with a sense of security that they will be ok. Obviously I'll put a disclaimer here but for a festival it was really, really x3 well done.

Veg patch that mrs T built is holding up and producing masses of fruit and veg which we reckon has / will save us over £300 over the year so that has been a boom.

One downer is the dog, Tinks the red setter needs an operation to remove a small lump under his skin. £300 at least and then they asked if I wanted the vet to give him a saline drip to aid recovery, pain killers and things like that...! all of course had to be paid for on top of the £300 estimate but the really gauling thing that has me bitterly dissapointed with the vets is that we have to pay upfront then claim it back of the insurance company.

I've been a regular, faithful cutomer of this vets practise for over 40 years, YES 40 YEARS and they won't let me pay for the op a few weeks after it's done. We used to bread greyhounds so the vet was at our house so much he was a family friend. An average bill back then in the mid 80's was around £400 a month, every month but loyalty doesn't pay these days it seems.

So much so that we will be going to the PDSA and asking them to do the op and pay up front to them but hopefully as a charity they will be cheaper. I will be fund raising for them as well as a way of saying thanks..

Right off to watch the golf to see if Tom Watson can pull off another open win...