A lesson in how panic-buying can get you nowhere fast
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ODD how life sometimes teaches you a lesson, particularly when you least expect it.
I have to admit, to my eternal shame, I was one of the first people in Scotland to panic-buy petrol ahead of the recent strike.
The story about staff at the Grangemouth refinery walking out on strike surfaced on a Sunday morning.
I heard it at 6.30am and I was on the petrol forecourt 30 minutes later.
Looking back, I can see how ridiculous my behaviour was.
In my defence, a queue was already forming and, more to the point, my tank was almost empty.
The point is I would have been there even if it had been half-full.
The following thoughts were going through my mind: how much petrol could I fit into my tank and how long would it last? Should I fill some container or other – just in case?
Did I have any altruistic thoughts? One or two maybe. How would ambulance drivers cope and people with important jobs to do such as nurses and doctors.
But it wasn’t long before I was back to wondering how I would cope with travelling to work every day.
As for the striking workers, I was very ambivalent about their plight.
Mostly, I was thinking, at least they’ve got a blithering pension, which is more than I can say for myself. I am not, as the boy scouts say, prepared.
I live with someone who has been paying into a pension since he was three months old. OK, I exaggerate but he has always been well organised on that score and I admire that sort of resourcefulness.
I have not been as prudent but I do have a very sound investment as I own half my house and there’s no mortgage. In the time I have owned it, the house has tripled in value.
That aside, if I feared I would lose out at work on my pension rights, I would never, in a million years, consider going on strike.
I am beginning to stray from my point which is how I responded to the prospect of going without petrol.
And here comes the lesson.
I was driving home, had left the M8 motorway and was on the outskirts of Edinburgh when I ended up in a long tailback with people braking then accelerating then braking. It was exhausting, utterly.
I noticed a smell – like burning rubber – and, as you do, immediately assumed it must be my car’s engine.
I looked down to see if anything was wrong and crunch, went straight into the car in front. My radiator exploded.
I closed my eyes, dreading some guy clambering out of his car and bawling at me. But the man was fairly calm, if shaken. He explained that he had been doing exactly the same as me – slowed down because of the smell, opened his window and wondered what it was. By the way, I have no idea what the smell actually was.
I went from wondering how I would manage without enough petrol to being forcibly car-less.
Thanks to an oversight with my car insurance, I wasn’t entitled to a courtesy car, so I became dependent on public transport for the first time in years.
In fact, I was in exactly the position we all would have found ourselves in had the fuel crisis been as catastrophic as some people were forecasting.
Believe it or not – and a lot of car drivers won’t – there is a public transport infrastructure out there, of sorts.
Because people like me spend so much time cocooned inside our little metal boxes, insulated from the real world, we either ignore, or, even worse, despise (without any legitimate reason) public transport and those who use it.
For the past 10 days, I have been a bus and train person, emerging with the usual commuter complaints: too many people, too little room, the occasional delay.
Yet, every time I made a journey, I reached my destination; invariably on time.
Some journeys took a lot longer than they do by car. Oddly, the shortest journeys, say, from my home to the local supermarket, took the longest, and that I found frustrating.
I suddenly discovered I needed surgery to have my right arm amputated as, every time I waited in a bus queue, it kept shooting up to stop a taxi when one came into my direct line of vision. After a while, I got used to waiting.
My one and only real complaint is the staggering cost of train travel.
It is absurd to expect people to forego their cars and use public transport if the cost is so unreasonable. I was amazed, no less, to discover that more and more people are travelling by train.
In 2007, UK passengers travelled a total of 30billion miles by rail, surpassing the previous known record year which was 1946 when, according to research, demobilisation at the end of the war caused a huge increase in rail passenger numbers.
I was amazed at the increase simply because the cost is so high as commonsense dictates that – to make public transport more attractive – prices would have to be reduced.
Also, the huge choice of train tickets available for the same journey – Sava-this and Sava-that – is absurd and no doubt, intended to lull you into believing you are getting some sort of a deal which you most definitely are not.
My car won’t be back until Friday. Until then my handbag will continue to be littered with train and bus tickets.
However, I have learned one lesson: there is no need to panic buy petrol. If another dispute occurs, I will just leave my car at home and use public transport.
If only because, at a single stroke, it disempowers the selfish few who threaten us with a serious fuel shortage just because someone threatened the pensions of people who haven’t yet started work.
After all, where is the fun in striking if you affect no one other than the fat cats in the boardroom?
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