I fell in love with it at first sight, parked outside the showroom, low and streamlined, sculpted out of what looked like mist with the sun shining through it, a very very pale silvery grey, with a pearly lustre. I kept finding reasons to drive past the showroom so that I could look at it again, and each time I felt a pang of desire.

I knew I could walk into the showroom and buy the car without having to think if I could afford it. But I hesitated and hung back. Why ? Because, when I couldn't afford a car like that, I disapproved of cars like that : fast, flash, energy-wasteful and Japanese. I always said I'd never buy a Japanese car, not so much out of economic patriotism (I used to drive Fords that turned out to have been made in Belgium or Germany) as for emotional reasons. I'm old enough to remember World War Two, and I had an uncle who died as a POW(1) working on the Siamese(2) railway. I thought something bad could happen to me if I bought this car, or that at the very least I would feel guilty and miserable driving it. And yet I coveted it. It became one of my "things" - things I can't decide, can't forget, can't leave alone. Things I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about.

Can you believe it ? While war raged in Yugoslavia thousands, died daily of AIDS in Afica, bombs exploded in Northern Ireland and the unemployment figures rose inexorably in Britain, I could think of nothing except whether or not to buy this car.

I began to get on Sally's nerves. "For God's sake, go and have a test drive, and if you like the car, buy it," she said. (She drives an Escort herself, changes it every three years after a two-minute telephone conversation with her dealer, and gives another thought to the matter). So I had a test drive. And of course I liked the car. I loved the car. I was utterly seduced and enraptured by the car. But I told the salesman I would think about it. "What is there to think about?" Sally demanded, when I came home. "You like the car, you can afford the car, why not buy the car?" I said I would sleep on it. Which meant; of course, that I lay awake all night worrying about it. In the morning at breakfast I announced that I had reached a decision. "Oh yes?" said Sally, without raising her eyes from the newspaper. "What is it?"

"I've decided against", I said. However irrational my scruples may be, I'll never be free from them, so I'd better not buy it". "OK" said Sally. "What will you buy instead?" "I don't really need to buy anything", I said. "My present car is good for another year or two". "Fine", said Sally. But she sounded disappointed. I began to worry again whether I'd made the right decision.

David LODGE, Therapy, 1995.

(1) POW = Prisoner of War
(2) Siam, now Thailand, was occupied by the Japanese during WWII