Fall Back... Spring Forward!

The clocks have gone forward and not a moment to soon.

I'm not a winter person by any means... I get weary of the dark nights and mornings and I get lethargic and bogged down in many ways. Long live the Spring!

Similarly I've recently been through a mini-winter spell of the spiritual kind. OK, call it an overnight blizzard. Whatever it was,I had been feeling out of gas and was wide open to spiritual attack... and as sure as the winter follows the autumn, the attack came.

This is why, in matters of belief you shouldn't merely trust your feelings; instead you should check them against your faith and the facts.

Sometimes it's the small things that remind you of your greatest hopes. It is the single flower that pokes it's head above the snow; the glimpse of a distant ray of sunlight in the midst of the maelstrom; the sound of songbirds returning from a wintry exile; or the scent of blossom on the gentle breeze following a bitterly cold gale...

... the tenderness of a brief kiss, following a long exile.

Likewise it wasn't something massive that shifted my feelings/perspective. It was an answer to the briefest of prayerful thoughts. I had on the advice of friends, turned down the offer of one car (I wasn't sure about it either), but I find that I study my Bible and pray best when I'm alone at lunch times. All well and good in the summer, not so good in the winter or when it is raining down. I also am acutely aware that I need to to see a friend who needs my help and I knew that in order to do that I needed my own transport.

So I prayed.

It had been a good few weeks since I rejected the previous car and I thought I had been forgotten. However, the very morning after I prayed that prayer... my phone rang and
I was told of another car. I pursued it ardently, recognising it as an opportunity not to be missed.
Come Wednesday, I should be the owner of a silver Peugeot 206 51 plate with a mere 34,000 miles on the clock. No, it doesn't look like the one in this old advert:

As a brief humorous aside... have you ever noticed how big budget adverts make cars that were top of the line in year's gone past, look even older and more naff now that time has moved on? Here's a good example. Takes my breath away? Yeah with laughter. Please feel free to post me any of your own examples

Anyway, back on topic and as I said... the answer was nothing major, but it was a small blessing... like that first flower through the snow. It was the timing that was crucial and not the magnitude.

More importantly it reminds me of a blog post I wrote quite some time ago... which carries a far stronger message that is both relevant and demonstrates that God does not forget us:

God Remembers?

So I like to think that God has wound the clock on for me personally. I'm back up on two feet again.

Thank you to those of you who have been concerned for me. It was appreciated.

Driven

Those of you who have been in the habit of visiting my blog on a regular basis, will be aware that I ran a monthly saga that eventually came to be known as Debtwatch. It was where I spoke openly about how I believed God had provided the opportunity, need and the desire for me to clear up the temporal effects of some of my past mistakes. By his grace, it took me less than a year.

It's been several months since I even touched upon the subject... I believe I paused only to mention that I had taken a breather and treated myself to a laptop.

However, I have not been idle. I have been working along a similar principle to try and save up for a car... as well as looking at more long term savings.

At the current time, I'm 3 months into my voyage of saving. I could probably afford a vehicle of some description now but it would undoubtedly be a:

So much as I'm dying to get out on the open road again... I think I'm going to have to be patient. This is really frustrating because there are people I want to meet, places I want to go... there are events in the calendar coming up that may well require me to be under my own steam if I am to help others... and at present I can't - the way is shut. To people questioning the environmental wisdom of me purchasing a car, I would caution that it's very easy to pontificate about the importance of public transport when you live in a metropolitan transport hub like London or Birmingham. Living in a small relatively rural market town does not offer me the same advantages. I have to travel 8 miles to access the nearest rail network... and direct trains are very hard to come by.

By my estimation, I think I'll probably be ready by the beginning of July (but then my money is in an ISA... so i may not be able to get to it before then anyway).

I'm looking at getting a car that's about 3 or 4 years old and is 1.4 litres or lower in cubic capacity. The budget I'm setting myself is approximately £3,500 - £4,000.

I reckon I'll be looking at something like a Ford KA:

... or a car in the same class. I don't need anything flash, just something that will get me from A to B without flying apart at the seams.

If you have an recommendations about make, model, specification - heck even colour (but not something crazy like "hot pink"), I'm fairly open minded.

I'm reminded of the time - several years ago, when a friend passed his driving test and we jokingly set up the P.P.B.V. (Pat's Porsche Benevolent Fund), in our youth fellowship's magazine (I was joint editor at the time). The project was a surprise success and we managed to raise the necessary funds...

...for a die cast model.

So I announce with some trepidation the launch of my new fundraising trust - S.A.I.N.T. (Society for Accumulation of Income for Nick's Transportation). I say with trepidation because this is the Internet... and there are probably some people out there who are crazy enough to actually contribute - I probably know half of them! ;-)

To All Things An End...

I should have seen it coming... in fact I believe in a way, I did.

This morning at approximately 10:30 AM my car hit a greasy patch, struck a kerb and managed to spin itself face first into a crash barrier (ironically I'd regained control at this point and had the barrier not been there I would have been able to brake the car to a halt on some grass as I was only doing 30). I was actually en-route to church at the time. It must have looked worse than what it did because with the help of a local, I pushed the car about 15 metres back into a side road to avoid causing more trouble to passing traffic. so any passers by probably thought I'd whacked the barrier at 60 and been propelled backwards. If that were the case I'd have been mashed myself. Can't have been hit with much force because it occurs to me now that the airbag didn't deploy.

It's funny because about three weeks ago I'd had this conversation in my mind where I'd told myself that if anything happened to her, I wouldn't replace the car for a while... I would concentrate on clearing debts and saving for a better car and/or a home to call my own. It's almost as if I was being prepared for the eventuality.

I'm pretty sure she's a write off, it's just the front, but the nature of how I hit the barrier and the age of the vehicle will count against it and I'm sure that economically she will be beyond repair.

Though I'll miss my car terribly, I'm totally at peace. I didn't go into shock at any point after the crash and I felt the presence of God around me while subsequent events unfolded. I was being looked after and I believe he is at work in this... it happened so that something beneficial long term could be brought about I believe.

L860 YWP rest in peace.

Return of the Nickmobile

The lady is back!

Sorry if you think it's a bit sexist to refer to a car in the feminine... but I don't have a problem with people personifying their cars as men, and surely if Ellen MacArthur refers to her boat as "she", then it's not really sexist. I think it's to do with your attitude towards the subject. If you see it as a control thing "you are my vehicle, I am your master" then it's sexist, but if it's just a "we're in this together" anthropomorphic personification of companionship... in my opinion that's OK.

Anyway I believe I had a gentleman's bet with you all. I said the car bill would probably balance out with the reclaimed tax I received. I was right. God is good, God provides.

I did get a bit of a scorching for not taking it in sooner though, apparently the rattle wasn't a loose bush, but the shock absorber!!!! Eeek!

Musings on God, Automobiles and the Taxman.

Well first the Good News! I managed to get one over on the Inland Revenue!

Basically they've been overcharging me for about a year now, but they've finally seen it my way and so this month i don't have to pay income tax and I get a little bit back as rebate.

However... now the bad news! My car gets serviced tomorrow. It's overdue anyway, but there is a distinct rattling in the front nearside wheel... probably just a bush... hopefully not the wheel coming off. I always get pessimistic about this sort of stuff... I'm convinced I'll need all new tyres and an exhaust, the current ones have been on for years, yet have miraculously remained roadworthy!!!!!!

I wouldn't be at all surprised, if the bill for the car hits somewhere in the region of the amount I got back from the tax office.

Have you ever seen Signs? I really enjoyed it. A lot of sci-fi fans think it's quite poor... but I think they miss the point. The film is not actually a science fiction... it merely uses science fiction as a vehicle to get the real message across. That message is best summed up in a question Mel Gibson's character asks Joaquin Phoenix:

"See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences? "


I personally don't really believe in coincidence... I believe even the seemingly random events that happen in the world happen for a greater purpose, albeit not a purpose we can always understand. It's a bit like chaos theory... you know, everything appears just haphazard and unplanned but if you look closely patterns do emerge.

Here's a clip from the climax of Signs that illustrates that point quite beautifully:

That's why I believe that things have worked out the way they have. I think God knew I
wouldn't be able to pay for my car under normal circumstances, so events that seemed annoying a year ago have worked to my favour in the end.... thanks to his grace and his planning. Well that's the way I see it.

And so I'll leave you now, with that same question:

"See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences? "