Claire, my insufferable sister, is thinking of buying a car from an unsuspecting neighbour of hers who has no idea how seriously she is going to put them through their paces in proving that their vehicle is in a state of pristine perfection. Claire, if her track record is anything to go by, will accept nothing less.

I don’t know why she insists on buying a used car if she’s going to aim so high as to bag a completely flawless ride. She says she’d rather save her money, which is fine, but she might need to acknowledge that there’s a reason for used cars being cheaper. Still, I have to admire her standards.

I guess it’s nothing to be sniffed at that she demands an up-to-date car service logbook. There are definitely mechanics that do logbook servicing Ringwood, so it’s not like it’s that hard for a car owner to keep on top of that. And I do have to grant that Claire is simply taking advantage of all available resources in her obsessions with RACV pre-purchase inspections. For car buyers in Ringwood, this is probably normal, actually.

Given the nature of the junkbucket that I drive around, I should probably cut Claire some slack around her perfectionism. I know for sure that I could do with a brake pad replacement sometime really soon, and I don’t even know where my manufacturer’s logbook is. There’s an outside possibility that the thing wouldn’t even qualify as roadworthy. 

I do wonder how we ended up so different – me with my laissez-faire attitude to life in general (but particularly to auto maintenance and repairs), and Claire with her whole thing of requiring everything to be just so.

Perhaps I’ll consider taking a leaf out of her book and looking into finding a good mechanic to tell me if my car should be on the road or not. Having said that, I might also go with her when she heads over to chew her neighbour’s ear off tomorrow  – just to reign in her inevitable snarling over some tiny stain on the carpet.