Four x Four Feckers!

I remember getting a spin in one of those behemoths once, no there was another time now that I think of it. But the thing is, each time I got a spin, I was happy to find that it was most uncomfortable.

I was trying to sell a broken-down house (probably to some gullible Brit) for a cute hoor from Cork who had a four-by-four vehicle. At the time, I used to do this sort of thing for a living, you see. Anyway, I don't remember what make of yoke it actually was, but it looked very sleek and powerful from the outside. At the time, I used to admire these vehicles and, to a lesser extent, the people who owned them, God help us. Before mounting the yoke, I stood back and said "God, but that's a fine vehicle!"
- "It cost enough!" He professed in a tone markedly tinged with regret and delivered from the side of his mouth that was planted around the middle of his red face.
- "I'd say it did, now." says I, giving a conspiratorial wink as I leaped energetically inwards, narrowly avoiding a potentially painful collision between my head and the frame of the doorway of his impressive automobile.
I sat smiling with satisfaction for a moment, taking in the height from the earth's surface, the leather on the seats and the dusty debris that littered the cabin. Oh, my! This was living! It felt like being high on a dusty seat on a cushion of air, if one could possibly dream of such a thing. The big bastard of a diesel engine snarled into life and she began to move along the relatively smooth public road.

But, guess what? It began to bounce and throw me in every conceivable direction. I had imagined that with this much height and power, all bumps would be absorbed by the time they travelled the considerable distance from the road surface to your arse. That should be the idea behind such a design, I would have thought. Surely, says I to myself in my head, that is the very reason why these large yokes exist in the first place. But, no; not the case, as it turned out. In fact, the opposite is true - The bumps and lumps are magnified with distance, much like the way a film projector might magnify the size of the image on screen.
"Are we there yet?" I enquired hopefully, as I bounced off the roof of the jeep and landed on his left shoulder.
"Another bit-een East of here and we're right," He explained helpfully.
I hurriedly closed my window for fear of being bounced out onto the unforgiving rugged stone-scape of West Cork.

The second time was a little better, but that's only because I was drunk and I was in the back of the thing, with 3 other drunken people who were able to cushion my repeated falls. I do remember that it was a Land Rover, though - a new type one that looks really comfortable from the outside.

The whole point of this perhaps seemingly pointless meandering is to get across my puzzlement as to why these things are so popular. It seems to me that people with large egos need an extra-large vehicle in which to drive them around. 15 years ago, it was only farmers that had them, but now the majority of the jeep-users are those who don't need them. The fact is that I couldn't afford one of these things (or maybe I could - I haven't made the necessary enquiries) but if I had money to spend on a fine car, I'd get something really fast and comfortable and not too expensive to run.

In this country, we've gone from openly taxing people to doing it by stealth - not a good sign for any republic and not a good example for the younger citizens. No, no. I think we should be more open about it again and tax the shit out of the four-by-four fuckers who guzzle around in their ridiculously over-sized contraptions.