Enough is enough.
Two children at school in two different boroughs and a husband who is now working every hour that god sent (thank you god I am not complaining). But after two more hideous days of struggling to get us all on the bus in the peeing rain by 8.20am I have crumbled and hired a car.
But not just any old car.. oh no no no. I have joined.. wait for it.. drum roll...
STREETCAR...
Mini Godmummy told me about these guys a while back and I had always remembered what a great idea it was. As anyone who has ever tried to hire a car in Central London will know most of them are based out in the ass end of nowhere like Park Royal or at Heathrow airport. So I ask myself, if you are stranded by the roadside in W5 with two small children and a broken down vehicle how do you get your pretty ass to Park Royal?
Well, you don't is the answer.
So I went online and joined Streetcar. Now I must stress I am not working for them or doing shameless PR here.. I don't get a freebie for this. I just think that they are bloody marvellous and that many more service industries should base themselves on this model. For people like ME, it just doesn't get any better than this.
You pay a £50 year's membership fee and you get sent, the very next day, a credit card thingie with membership number and pin code. Then when you want to book a hire car you simply go online or ring up, give them your postcode and, and here's the brilliant bit, they have magical bright shiny VW Golfs and Polos parked all around the residential streets of London, all computer controlled so that when you tell them where you live they will tell you exactly where your nearest available VW Golf happens to be. In my case three streets from my house. Now that's what I call handy.
I walked round the corner and there it was. I scanned my credit card thingie over the windscreen. 'Click Click Click' it went and opened up. I got in and in the glove compartment was a hand held terminal a bit like the ones you pay with in restaurants. Attached to this, the keys to your car. You type in your pin number and 'click click' out the keys pop.
Et voila. You drive away a happy mummy with a new car to do the school run in.
Now isn't that brilliant? They all even have ipod docks for you to plug in your tunes. I couldn't work mine - but never mind - every Streetcar has a built in phone so you can phone them and a very nice man told me exactly how to get it going whilst I was sitting in the car.
Why can't everything in life be this easy?
This post was written by Bush Mummy who blogs at The Bush Babies. She is 37, bonde, and very happily married to the most wonderful man in the world...
Photo credit: Noo
Very, very cool. Wish we had that out in the sticks.
Posted by: Susanna (A Modern Mother) | 27 January 2009 at 07:30 PM