A vroom of one’s own: how I loved my old Mini

Almost 100 years ago the writer Virginia Woolf advised women to find themselves a room of their own: a refuge away from the busy, crowding demands of life, where they could focus instead on themselves and write, think, be. At a time of austerity, when space is at an expensive premium and when post-pandemic empty nests have been re-occupied by returning offspring and spare rooms newly identified as shared office space, I have found an alternative sanctuary.

For the past 20 years or so my refuge was my car, acquired with the first real money I ever earned as a writer. My Mini offered me an unconditional escape during the milestones, the turbulence, the highs and lows of two decades. It was an unchanging place of stability and comfort, seeing me through the challenge of house moves, of becoming successively an orphan, a wife (for the second time) and a grandmother.