TMW – The modern world.
Where do I fit in to it? Well, I don’t – not really; which is odd for a girl of the “computer age”. It’s funny for someone so in love with technology to hate it with quite such a passion – and to want to so strongly separate myself from the world in which I exist.
Variously, my friends have recently come to the conclusion they need to replace their cars; Lauren’s little red fiat is, not to put to finer point on it – at the end of it’s design life. Bits are breaking at a rate which I find quite staggering, my friend Nikki has discovered serious structural rot in her minor – such that it’s condemed to a scrap heap (either by her or by the next owner, unless someone actually takes the time to do what I did for Rebecca, a complete new floor and structure end-to-end).
It’s brought to life an interesting dichotomy in our opinions; I suppose I’m very pro – perhaps to my detriment – the devil I know. That, and I feel that both with Claire and Rebecca, I largely have these vehicles in trust, they’re both quite capable of outlasting me by a not insubstantial margain. As long as I look after them, and plan in advance as far as possible, they will probably be around for my estate to sell on after I die.
That doesn’t stop me being frustrated or despondent when something [big] goes wrong – I really thought I was up a certain creek, sans paddle, when the engine died on Rebecca. But the footpegs falling off on Claire? That was an expected disaster – it just occured rather earlier that scheduled.
Anyway, I’m rambling.
It’s brought to light this dichotomy. I believe; truly believe; that my minor is an ideal every day car, she’s racked up 80 miles a day for periods of time. And I also believe that old houses are the only type of houses worth having. I don’t do modern. I don’t partake in the modern world.
My bike, I’ll grant, dates from just 1991, but it’s design is substantially older.
I don’t believe in modern cars, or houses, or really anything. Modern design is just something I really, really hate. Modern houses are an affront to my design sensibilities (design life = ~40 years) as are modern cars (design life= ~ 3-5 years). Modern computers – with their cheap-as-possible components, modern printers with their thin-as-you-can-get-away-with plastic? It all makes me shudder. I have watched with great sympathy, but no great suprise, the saga of my friends New Build house (things have been cost downed to the point they don’t actually work anymore).
And more and more I feel the urge to retreat into my little space on a mountain with my Morris Minor, my ETZ, and my beloved – and live in a converted / restored house.
I dunno, watching my friend who drove a minor select essentially a modern custom, well, it’s left me feeling isolated in my beliefs again, I guess. Unlike a lot of my other beliefs, my lack of faith in the modern universe is reinforced by the world around me and is very deeply ingrained, so it’s unlikely to go away. So I think I’ll remain lurking in my anti-modern-world space until I die :-)
