A car
I live in Edinburgh, a city with public transport that's good enough and feet that can take me to where I want to go even if the busses aren't running. But after four years, I started thinking about buying a place.

"A car would be very useful for that," thought I. "I can use it to help us move, and then given that I work a fuck of a way out in the Lothians, commuting will become a lot easier. And though I'd love to get back on a motorbike, a car is more practical. I just need to make sure I end up with parking space." (I was, at the time, resident on the Royal Mile, in gobbing distance of the castle, and could no more park a car there than I could fly.)

Luckily, one of my dad's mates was selling a car. Not a Honda Accord (no supermodels for me), but a black Ford Focus diesel. Sensible and boring. The beige of the car world. I took it for a test drive, checked it out, and plonked down the requisite number of notes. My dad offered his garage until I found a place (my family are all from Hull). I scoured ebay for a few bits that needed replaced or that would look a bit better than the worn stock bollocks. That plus the insurance and tax ended up being another £490 on the car.

I then returned to Embra. After six months of life fucking me like I was in the middle of a record-breaking gangbang, buying a place looked off the cards. I asked my dad to put an ad in the paper and get the bloody thing sold, so I could pay off the loan I'd taken out to buy the bastard vehicle.

"Good news," quoth he a couple of weeks later. "You've turned a profit!" A car that had cost £1500 had sold for £2000. The shit from eBay had made me a grand total of a tenner over what I'd ended up paying out. Except the loan, over the course of it, had charged me £160 interest.

So I ended up paying £150 for the privilege of driving a car once. It wasn't worth it.

Now, of course, I'm back on the hunt for a motorbike...
(DigitalRaven will have to make do with gin, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:30, 3 replies)

I was there a few weeks ago,
I don't even know why you would use the buses, the city is so damn small. My mates live near Easter Road and kept getting the bus in cos Waverly station is 'miles away', I walked to it in 10 minutes!

Granted the public transport is impressive though.
( Bamboo Steamer, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:33, closed)

Busses
Are useful when working out at the Gyle, or in Musselburgh. But for most things, I walk or cycle (yes, holding to all the rules of the road, including stopping at traffic lights and giving way to cars).

Busses and cars both are also useful for carrying large amounts of cat litter, and large amounts of crap bought in IKEA.
(DigitalRaven will have to make do with gin, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:12, closed)

Edinburgh
The only place I ever got a parking ticket. On my bike! I didn't even know there was parking on the Royal Mile.
(ianisme, Fri 1 Oct 2010, 3:15, closed)