I had been through some really bad times and looking back this was close to the bottom (but not quite there!). It was the consensus of everybody around me that I needed a holiday, so I decided to head for the sun. I booked myself 10 days on Gran Canaria in a nice hotel with an infinity pool.
I spent my days sleeping by the pool and my nights drinking in an Irish Bar watching Football and listening to live music, alternating between long nights of too much Guinness or too much Jack ‘n’ Coke.
It was a good trip, lonely, but very relaxing.
I got home and decided to take a look at my finances. With the weekly payments to my petsitter, a holiday that everyone told me (without any knowledge of my financial situation) I needed and general living to excess (plus all those bad car decisions) I panicked. I was rapidly building debt, my credit cards were getting full and the 20mpg that the Mazda was returning wasn’t exactly helping so after some quick ‘Rob Maths’ (a term coined by my Ex to explain, for example, why I thought taking a £3k loss that would take a year of driving to recoup, was a reasonable thing to do) I decided I need a more sensible car, whisper it, maybe a diesel?!
I couldn’t afford a BMW and the only other diesel car I fancied was an Alfa GT. Such a great looking car and, with a simple remap, amazingly quick.
It was definitely an adjustment after the Rx-8. On several occasions I entered the large sweeping roundabout just outside Winchester in second gear only to find myself at the rev limiter halfway round. The Mazda didn’t start pulling until 4000 RPM whereas the Alfa was all done by 4500 RPM … like I said it was an adjustment…. but what a pretty little car.
Dreams, cars and dreams about cars 
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