carshare?

carshare?

Given my current open-and-honest approach to life, I feel I should be honest.

Turns out, I'm not as green as I think.

For the last two months I have been keeping a spreadsheet of my car journeys, to work out how much I actually use it, and to see how much it would cost to join a car club. There's one by the tube, and it's really not that far.

And I've also been rationalising my journeys. I do a whole weekly planning thing, so I don't duplicate travel (partly because it's good for the planet, and partly because I just don't want to spend a lot of time in my car). Like, I have left a t-shirt in a friend's house in Hendon for about six weeks now, as they're never home when I'm passing and I'm not prepared to make a special journey. Silly, perhaps.

Like, on Tuesday, while passing on another errand, I took a bottle of wine to some holy-acre-Finchley friends who having invited me to lunch on Shabbat. They also laughed at my "efficiency" at delivering a gift five days early.

I even talked to my neighbours about having a carclub car in our drive, which I figured for my 10-16 hours a week would definitely swing it, if the carcub car was actually outside my house. It would be like my own car, only ocassionally not there. I talked to the ops manager at CityCarClub - they estimate 25% usage, so it's mostly there when you need, and there are others in Swiss Cottage, Willesden, not so far away. And, of course, there's always the bus.

My neighbours laughed at me. Like I was properly mad. Like I came from another planet where people are worried about the planet. Ready for this, they're not.

And, turns out, I may not be either.

Because, when it comes down to it, the actual giving-up-my-car bit, like selling it and not having the convenience seems remarkably hard. Maybe I will improve. I'm thinking of joining for a month trial, and keeping the car, to see what it's really like.

Sometimes you have to do hard things, right. Right?