Au revoir, lovely car!
A few years back when our eldest daughter Eva was about four years old, a new family moved into the house over the road. We toddled over en masse to introduce ourselves. "Hello!", we said. "We've got TWO cars!" piped up Eva. Oh the shame. Hi there, we're your new neighbours, and we've got more cars than you. Thanks, kid. (Turns out they also had two cars, but one was parked on the road and had therefore escaped Eva's beady eye.)
Not our driveway :-)
Fast-forward to two weeks ago and our beloved Eos convertible (our fun car, opposed to our family car) neatly solved the embarrassing 'more cars than the neighbours' problem by obligingly snapping its cam belt on the motorway at high speed. Fortunately Andre is a total badass driver and managed to drift without power onto the hard shoulder, braving the displeasure of many truck drivers in the process. Yikes. VW very kindly offered to charge us £800 to check if the snapped cam belt was their fault, so we decided the best choice was to scrap the car. We've both driven to our respective workplaces for years, but I now schlep into town by bus so we've had a car sitting unused on the driveway for nearly a year, which isn't particularly efficient. So it's not exactly the worst problem in the world.
But man. We loved that car. We really, really loved that car. We bought it shortly after we got together, before we got married, before we got the dogs, long before the girls were even a twinkle in our eye. We brought Eva home from the hospital in the back seat. I stuffed a buggy into the boot. We took the roof down in all weathers and squeezed in Christmas trees, metres of tile trim, timber and Ikea flat packs. I kept driving headbands in the car so I could drive with the top down without my hair turning into a crazy wig (sometimes I let it turn into a crazy wig just for the fun of it).
We drove the car to Provence with my brother and his girlfriend in the back, and drove home with my brother and his girlfriend in the back plus a giant mirror acquired in a florist's shop in Isle sur la Sorgue.
Still not our driveway.
We drove the car to Provence again when I was heavily pregnant with Eva, and this time took our doggies with us, Penny and Enrique, having acquired passports for them at great expense.
Olive grove parking space.
Enrique loved the swimming pool.
Penny sunbathing.
French shopping expedition.
Keeping cool in the sun.
Seven-months pregnant!
French tennis balls are just as much fun to play with as English tennis balls.
Catching some sunshine,
We wedged dogs and suitcases into the footwell everywhere we went, and travelled in significant discomfort because it was just such a ridiculously super-fun car to drive.
Bye bye, Eos. We'll miss you.