Last week the sunshine brought a blaze of colour and new life to everyone’s
garden. Except mine. What the sunshine brought to my garden was a herd of
bulldozers and a flock of dumper trucks.
After three glorious and happy years of monumental indecisiveness, the
uninterrupted quilt of blue sky convinced me that it might perhaps be a good
idea to install a little piece of Surrey in my back garden — a swimming
pool.
Frankly, I think these turquoise slashes are a cocktail of ugliness and wanton
expenditure, but friends have pointed out that one day my daughters will
bring their teenage friends round. And I must say, the idea of filling the
garden with a ton and a half of naked 17-year-olds does have a certain
appeal.
So, building a pool, then. How hard can it be? You dig a hole, line it with a
sort of glorified bin liner, add water and wait for the first teenager to
say she’s forgotten her bikini. “Oh, don’t worry, love. We don’t believe in
costumes here.”
Sadly, it’s not that simple. First, it turns out that the ground round where I
live is not clay, or limestone, or any of the usual things found in a
substructure. There’s a thin veneer of soil and then there’s a plate of iron
ferrite, beneath which is solid rock.
You remember that scene in Armageddon where Bruce Willis had to dig a hole on
an asteroid? Well, it was like that, only tougher.
Still, they’ve now achieved the required depth and the spoil is piled up
nearby. Well, I say piled. Because the hole is 40 by 20 by 7, I assumed the
lump of earth taken out would be 40 by 20 by 7.
It isn’t. It’s a mountain range. There is enough Cotswold stone to build a
housing estate, enough iron ore to build a troop of Agas, enough rubble to
build a motorway and enough soil to start a farm. The man in charge of the
project keeps asking what I want to do with it and all I can ever say is:
“Er, open a ski resort.”
The trouble is, he keeps asking lots of questions. What sort of paving do I
want? What sort of pool house? Do I want an automatic cover? Do I want a
Roman end? And I’ve worked out that if I say no to something, the bill is
£1,000. If I say yes, the bill is £1,000. Then there’s the gas supply that
has to go from the road to the boiler.
Think of this in terms of the trans-Siberian pipeline. And then watch as a
digger goes through your croquet lawn, through your herb garden, through
your vegetable plot, through the water main (which brought an authentic
Geneva-style water feature to the alpine mountain range), through the drive,
through the electricity cables (which caused my computer to stop working)
and finally through the cesspit (which caused my nose to follow in the
computer’s footsteps).
All the time I’m thinking of what I’d like to see round the pool when it’s
finished, which means I’ve spent the past few weeks watching Titchmarsh and
Dimmock, trying to get some pointers. But whatever I come up with is wrong.
Gravel? What, on bare feet? Grass? What, you want to pick soil out of the
filters? Smooth stones? Children throw them in the pool.
And talking of children, I have to consider the question of safety. Barely a
week goes by without some toddler drowning in a neighbour’s 2in-deep garden
pond. And here I am building a 7ft-deep lake. So that means it needs to be
fenced in somehow. A wet stone wall is £1,000. A dry stone wall is £1,000. A
wooden fence is £1,000.
The only good news is that I don’t have to worry about the wind chilling
swimmers and blowing leaves from nearby trees into the water, because it has
been blocked by Chipping Norton’s brand new Matterhorn.
Still, by June the Guild Ford, as we call it, will be finished. Mind you, by
June it will be raining. And therein lies the problem. Ideas that you have
when the sun in shining and there’s not a cloud in the sky rarely work when
they come out of your head and into the real world.
This is true of swimming pools and pergolas and garden furniture and it’s
especially true of convertibles.
I dare say that at some point this last week you wished that you had a
removable roof on your car. Well, I do, and I must admit that last Tuesday
morning it did cross my mind to take it down. I had to drive from Belgravia
to Notting Hill. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. Perfect.
However, what do you suppose this would look like? A middle-aged man, with the
wind in what’s left of his hair, cruising up Park Lane in a Mercedes SL.
There’s a word for people who do this. It’s not the worst word in the world,
which is reserved for people in BMWs. And it’s not the vernacular for an
illegitimate child, which is used on people who cut you up. No, the word is
t---. So I did what I always do and kept the top in place.
Then there’s the question of temperature. Last summer I found myself in Madrid
in August in an E-type Jag. It sounds absolutely idyllic, but in reality it
gave me some idea of what life is like for a boil-in-the-bag chicken kiev.
In Britain, however, it’s never quite warm enough for toplessness, and if it
is I’d rather you did it round my new pool.
You would too. Sure, things aren’t so bad at slow speeds, but you can’t take
the roof down in town because it’s t---ish. You therefore have to do it in
the countryside, and the resultant speed will bring a shiver to your
backbone. It’s cool, for sure, but the problem is, it’s also cool.
Women always always always want you to take the roof down when they get in a
car but the moment you go above 30 they always always always want you to put
it up again.
It’s not just the warmth either, or the fact that you will be whipped to death
by your own hair. It’s the noise. On a motorway you can’t listen to Terry
Wogan, you can’t listen to your new Coldplay CD and you can’t think either,
because all you can hear is a deafening roar. I guarantee that after a mile
you’ll think: “Why am I doing this?” And then after a while you’ll pull into
a service station and cover up.
All of which brings me to the new Smart Roadster. When I first heard about
this thing I thought: “Crikey! That’s great. An urban convertible. Fun.
Cheap. Cool. Easy to mend. And no roof. What could be better?” Well, let’s
leave aside the question of cheapness because the promise of an £11,500
price tag has been replaced with the reality of £13,495 for right-hand-drive
versions. Instead, let’s concentrate on what this car actually offers.
I should make it plain, in the interests of fairness, that I have neither
driven this car nor even seen one. But I do have the photographs and I do
have the statistics.
With a 700cc engine it’s not going to be even on nodding terms with the
concept of speedy. I’m told it takes 11 seconds to get from 0 to 60 and is
all out of answers when the needle hits 112. As a result you can forget
about the Ballad of Lucy Jordan. It might be capable of going through Paris,
and putting a warm wind in your hair, but with a top speed of 112mph it’s
not a sports car.
This is important. Urban chic, be it Timberland boots or the latest mobile
phone or a Range Rover, only works if the chic has a real world application.
And the Smart Roadster, from what I can gather, doesn’t. It doesn’t work on
the motorway, and on a country lane it would be left far behind by the local
postman.
Look at the advertisements for watches. Simply telling the time and looking
good aren’t enough. We’re always presented with images of Neil Armstrong and
round-the-world yachtsmen. The message is simple. You can wear this for
cocktails with the Brazilian ambassador but you can also wear it while
conquering one of his rainforests.
Style’s important but there must be some substance too. If a TVR Tuscan
had those muscly looks and made that growly sound but had the engine from a
fridge freezer under its bonnet, who in their right mind would buy one? And
that’s the Smart’s biggest problem. Yes, you get a foldaway roof, and while
that may work in your dreams the reality is a life of cold, noise and
looking like a git. So you keep it up and then what have you got? A 700cc
plastic consumer good. Really, it should have a Dyson badge on the back.
The fact is that if you must have a soft top, for just a smidgen more you
could buy a Mazda MX-5. This might be at low-water mark on the tide of
fashion but at least it’s a proper sports car, a fun thing whether it’s in
Mayfair or Mablethorpe, whether it’s 80 degrees or October. It’s a real car
for the real world, and the Smart just isn’t.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Smart Roadster
Engine type Three-cylinder, 698cc, turbo
Power 80bhp @ 5250rpm
Torque 81 lb ft @ 2250rpm
Transmission Six-speed automatic
Suspension (front) MacPherson struts, wishbones,
anti-roll bars (rear) De Dion suspension tube, wishbones, springs, dampers
Tyres 185/55 R15
Wheels Six-spoke 15in alloys
Dimensions 3427mm length; 1615mm width; 1192mm height
Fuel 55.4mpg (combined)
C02 122g/km
Acceleration 0 to 62mph: 10.9sec
Top speed 112mph
Price £13,495
Verdict The dream of cheap summer fun sounds fantastic,
but I suspect the reality will be cold, draughty and embarrassing
