Last time I filled up, I actually staggered when I looked at the display screen
I have an addiction that is increasingly expensive to feed. My poison of choice is an intoxicating chemical compound called Hexadecane. Street name: ‘diesel’. After Marlboro Lights and my husband, it’s the longest committed relationship of my life. It is vital to my well-being. Bouncing around the lanes in my old Discovery 4 makes me happy. Sometimes I will play ‘Fuel’ by Metallica (‘Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire’). But it comes at a cost.
Diesel prices are now so high (around £2 a litre) that the last time I filled up, I actually staggered when I looked at the display screen. I’d only meant to put in £50 but got distracted doomscrolling. A weekend in Paris would have been cheaper. With diesel exports from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz disrupted by America’s war on Iran, the price is set to continue rising.
Having assumed that a diesel and Discovery habit would be harder to kick than heroin (like Billy Connolly, smack is something I’m keeping in my back pocket for when the doctor tells me I’ve got Stage 4 cancer), the street value is pushing me to look for alternatives.
Andy Burnham has suggested we use Google Maps to find the lowest prices. This is not his finest hour: any savings would be squandered by driving 15 miles to find fuel that’s a 2p a litre cheaper. ‘Maybe it’s time you joined the rest of us and got an EV,’ was the response from old BBC colleagues and other misguided Marxists when I posted a picture of the pump display screen the last time I filled up (£159.75) with the caption ‘FUCK ME’.
But the trouble with metropolitan types — for whom anything outside the M25 is that mysterious part of Britain known as Not London — is that they don’t appreciate that I need a diesel engine because I live in the country, have livestock and have to tow.
But EVs are useless for towing. They’re so heavy – due to the weight of the battery – that they can’t muster enough power to pull themselves, a trailer and one tonne of horse. Inevitably, they end up rolling backwards. Only diesel engines are strong enough to tow and power farm machinery and lorries.
On the subject of EVs saving the world, I predict this will be about as good a call as Francis Fukuyama smugly proclaiming The End of History in 1992. We’ll soon be trying to negotiate roads that are so rutted, thanks to the weight of these Sherman tanks in smug, sleek bodies, that it will take as long to drive anywhere as in the days of the stagecoach. In America, where cheap fuel is considered a birthright (it’s virtually the 28th amendment) Donald Trump has done a deal with Putin to import Russian diesel ahead of the Midterms. ‘Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority,’ he wrote in a Truth Social post.
Here in Norfolk, our farmers have red diesel. But don’t be fooled by the name. ‘Red diesel’ sounds like something that Labour — with their neo-Nazi fever dreams of right-wing labradors and rural pubs playing Tomorrow Belongs to Me on the jukebox — have synthesised out of lentils and chickpeas for the hated kulaks to use in their tractors. But ‘red’ diesel is the same stuff, with a reduced rate of fuel duty (because it’s largely used off-road), just dyed red. Farmers Weekly tracks prices: this week it costs an average of 113.9p a litre.
In the past, I’ve been offered red diesel by a dodgy farmer, who invited me to come and fill up at his place — for cash, naturally; always the pusher’s preferred method of payment. I declined, of course. It’s extremely dodgy, plus I like to know the quality of the stuff I’m getting. But I wonder if he’s doing brisk business right now. However, it’s a risky move. Round here, local police are having a whale of a time, pivoting from nicking drivers who’ve had a second glass of wine before driving home from a dinner party, to pulling over 4x4s to ‘dip’ them.
Getting busted for the illegal use of red diesel will see you fined (£250 for a first offence), and possibly have your vehicle impounded. Repeat offenders can be looking at much higher fines and a custodial sentence of up to seven years.
So, I’m out of options. ‘I wish I knew how to quit you’ cries a desperate Jake Gyllenhaal to Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. But it’s impossible. I stand at the pump, feeling as misunderstood as a gay cowboy in 1960s Wyoming, and sigh as I squeeze the trigger with one hand and share a meme of Donald Trump sucking diesel from a nozzle with the other.
Comments