New types of diesel

Last night at a Shell station in Bracknell I bought what I now realise may be my penultimate tank of diesel (plain B7). Assuming the iX arrives early enough in July to take us on the graduation trip to York, the CLS has maybe 600 miles of holiday travel to do, to and in the Dales and home, and that'll be it. I doubt I'll even need to fill it at its final pump visit; I didn't bother quite filling it yesterday.

Petrol stations are depressing places, aren't they? Although I did buy a bag of Waitrose liquorice allsorts. My home wallbox doesn't offer those.

Expensive way of making varnish leaving petrol in a car.

You'll be trading up to an(other) EV before you know it, Al. I was looking at the Mach-E GT, not because I want one, I stumbled across one on mobile.de last night, 5,000kms on the clock under 50k€. I then looked at my local Ford emporium, 77k€ for brand new. 27k€ is an awful lot for 5,000 kms and brand new bragging rights.

Petrol has come down in price here, I'll keep suffering the gaze across the fields while the pump does its thing hands free. One thing I like about filling up over here is I don't have to hold the pump, I could wander off for a quick cigarette if I still smoked.

I think I'll be keeping my current 2 cars for another 5-6 years.  I'm trying to wind down expenses now on a path to retirement.  And I've got some expensive home maintenance needs doing which is swallowing any potential newer car budget, and still 2 binlids in private school/University for the foreseeable.  Maybe I'm just feeling a bit pessimistic at the moment though, so I reserve the right to change that should I start to feel more bullish.

That’s a long time to wind down, Vić. We know you won’t actually buy another car but we’re counting on you to perk up and resume abortive shopping missions before long, especially as I probably ought to cease mine now that I’ve gone and made a decision.

I thought I’d made Boy1’s final student support payment last week; turns out there’s one more to do but it is nice when the end comes in sight. Two more years for Boy2, by which time they’ll be 48 between them, almost old enough to retire — at least as we imagined when we began working life.

In my gloomy moments, I count my pension savings and wonder how close I am to lifelong solvency if it (ie work) were all to end next week, or next year. But I don’t think retirement would be good for me just yet, in spite of the ‘golf’ trousers I apparently bought from John Lewis last week. They don’t look golfy, which is a good thing as that’s not what I bought them for.

I'm pretty sure I would as the vegan/vegetarian other driver(s) would start coughing their lungs out at the sight of a lighter, before extolling the virtues of tofu, quinoa and Quorn. That lecture would make me want to go examining the contents of the car park bins.