Update

Not much to report, so just a quick update on recent events:

• I've decided against buying the HQ Kingswood I mentioned a few posts back;
• Things have been busy work-wise lately;
• I've taken to going to the gym a bit more recently and I already feel better;
• Our social lunchtime soccer team (yes, I play soccer, yes, I am unco, please don't laugh, it brings back bad memories of primary school) won our first game of the season 6-4 on Monday;
• I scraped the underside of the Commodore's front bumper exiting a steep driveway in Wollongong last weekend, which fortunately you can't see unless you're actually underneath the car. So no big deal.

My V8 is a bigger tree hugger than your hybrid

Following on from this morning’s discussion about getting a performance car now before it’s too late, there is however a way you can have your performance car and eat it too. Well, you really shouldn’t eat it as such, but you can certainly drive it without helping to stuff the planet.

This morning, I signed my car up with Greenfleet. They calculated that, given my level of fuel consumption and the distance I drive, my car will produce 6.78 tonnes of greenhouse gases this year, more or less. 26 trees will sort that out, and for the non-that-expensive sum of $61.17 (which would only buy me three quarters of a tank of petrol, after all), they will plant 26 trees on my behalf – which is nice. It will probably cost you less, because chances are your car is more environmentally friendly than mine. But, until you sign up, my car is now more environmentally friendly than yours, and more environmentally friendly than a hybrid car that hasn’t been signed up, which also appeals to my well-developed sense of irony.

I don’t know if the scheme will keep working if everyone signs up – we could possibly run out of space to plant trees in, or if last night’s news is anything to go by, we will certainly run out of water to grow them with – but this sort of carbon trading model certainly is a good way to enjoy guilt-free V8 performance.

Life's too short to eat fast food

So they say that money can’t buy happiness. The hell it can’t. Earlier this year I spent probably far more money than I really should have on a new car, and I’m as happy as Larry (Larry Perkins, in this case, seeing as what I went and bought myself was a 6 litre V8 Holden Commodore SS). I have to say, this is the only car that has ever made me laugh like a loon while driving it simply because of what it is capable of, and puts a smile on my face the rest of the time.

There wasn’t really anything wrong with my old car, other than the fact that it was a bit small for me and I was starting to get aches and pains from driving it. But, for reasons I can’t really explain, around the end of last year I started to form a view that time was running out for performance cars given global warming and the likelihood that the oil will run out in our lifetimes, and that every day spent driving an Astra was a day not spent driving something more interesting. Before we know it, our car choices will be down to boring Toyota Prius-style hybrids that you can’t even get with manual transmission, and tedious crossover recreational vehicles that are part 4WD and part people mover, a brilliant combination of two of the least inspiring vehicle types around. The performance car is likely to be doomed in the face of environmental pressures and ever-increasing overregulation of driving (as I like to say, there are laws against speeding but there are no laws against acceleration – yet).

No, I decided, the time to act was now before it’s too late. And this is the point I want to make. Because life really is short, when you think about it, so make hay while the sun shines (if clichés do it for you). I’m a car guy, so I leapt at the opportunity to buy something I really wanted as soon as I could afford it, and before life got in the way of me being able to do so. But it doesn’t just apply to cars, it applies to everything. Love the piano but stuck with a Casio keyboard from the 1980s? If you can afford it, go out today and buy yourself a proper piano. Love your beer? Stop drinking VB and switch to something good like Boag’s or Cascade immediately. Are you dreaming of seeing Paris? Book a ticket and go there while you can.

I think this is part of a whole attitude shift for me. I used to be content to put up with near enough is good enough. I even used to eat at KFC from time to time. And I used to put up with doing things I didn’t want to do for far too long. Well, no more. There simply isn’t enough time available in a lifetime to put up with crap. I’m not saying you should be selfish – indeed, there is little that is more satisfying than genuinely making a difference to someone else who really needs your help – I’m just saying that if there are things in your life you don’t like, and something that you really, really want, take action while you still can.