I fell in love with my new car.
Its not really a car its a Land Rover Discovery.
Its called The Beast (all my car's have had name's as to me they are far more than a piece of metal that gets you from A to B)
I've always slightly disapproved of giant 4 x 4's, and thought they were unnecessary, especially if you live in a town or city.
I know a lot of people have them and get a huge amount of enjoyment driving them, so I guess its ok if it makes you happy, but still never really understood.
But they were not for me, we had a normal estate car when my children were small and drove them all over the country on holiday's managing to fit in a giant tent, plus all the camping necessities like a cooker, beds and buckets and spades.
It/they were fine, we didn't need anything bigger.
I have always assumed 4 x 4's were just for farmers and not for general driving.
However when Phil announced that he was going to leave us for a proper job I made the decision I didn't want to drive the van as my everyday transport.
I liked driving the van on a motorway or in a town, but not here.
The roads are too narrow, the hills are too steep and I couldn't reverse it very well. Even though it has parking sensors I didn't trust them and because I drove around in a little self contained cab I sometimes forgot just how far it went back behind me.
All this was a shame because I love driving.
Driving is a really important thing to me, I've always loved cars and being behind a wheel, being free to go where I want, when I want.
Due to my epilepsy I had several years between fits when I couldn't drive as I had to relinquish my driving license until I was fit free for a year. I hated it and felt I was missing part of myself.
I have been car less for a while as The Zoom (my tiny sports car) isn't well and has been off the road since Christmas waiting for me to save up enough money to mend it.
Phil has had to buy a new car to get to his new job every day and I need a car so I can get up to the studio, as I said previously I didn't want to drive the van.
So we needed something big that would enable us to carry a lot of wool to show's and something that I could use to get to work even on the snowiest days in the winter.
A 4 x 4 seemed the only option and of course if you have a 4 x 4 it has to be a Land Rover - :-)
Once the decision had been made I spent weeks trying to justify why I wanted one to myself.
And was still in two mind's when we went to look at The Beast in Exeter several weeks back, the test drive was very short, just to the local Morrisons and back. I didn't even drive it properly, just around the car park like a complete beginner.
One of the reasons was that its an automatic and I hadn't driven one for nearly 30 years.
So for the past few weeks I have been anxious and excited all at the same time.
Made much worse because I focused on getting the Beast rather than Phil's immanent departure from NDS.
It was easier to panic about driving a new car than panic about having to run NDS without him.
On Friday (which was his last NDS day) we went to Exeter to pick it up. The photo above is of my first real time in the drivers seat, I screamed for the first few minutes and then realised that I was panicking about nothing and really enjoyed my drive home back to the moor.
I discovered several things on the way home, the first was that other driver's jump into hedges when they see you coming and that it didn't go very fast, which was a real shock as I'm used to driving a sports car.
And I also discovered that its really easy to park.
Over the weekend we had a long drive around the moor, it went up hills, round hair pin bends and over fields without any fuss or bother.
Now I need lots of excuses to drive it anywhere I can and can't wait for our first journey to the POP UP WOOL SHOW in Cheshire in a couple of weeks.
But even more so I am looking forward to the snow and torrential rain when the Beast will come into its own and do the job it was built to do.
Finally I feel complete (even though Dais and I still have a lot of NDS panicking to do)
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