Today I had to lie to somebody and I discovered I don't like that. It wasn't really bad - I had to pretend to want to buy a car´, which didn't really hurt anybody, but still I felt I was cheating the sales guy. He now thinks I'm interested in buying the car for which he probably gets a bonus when all he did was waste his time driving around with me.

And once you tell a lie you need to make up all those other lies to go with it. Why do you want to buy a new car? What car do you have now? Where is it parked? What color do you want? Do you have time to go over the configuration? I hate that. Didn't like the car either. Then again, he lied to me, too. It was an SUV and he asked whether I drove more in the city or more in the country. The answer "city" prompted him to say that an SUV was IDEAL for that because of the high seating position. Huh? SUV? Ideal for the city? As in "Off-Road"? As in "Forget about EVER finding a parking space"? As in "Never ever see a cyclist again"? I don't think so, Mister.

But you might like to read what Dave Barry has to say on the subject of SUVs, gas-guzzling unsafe behemoths of Hell that they are.

By the way, I am still trying to decide on a new car (unrelated to the story above which was for reasons purely business): I've decided on three candidates at least:

• The Mazda MX5
  
• The Fiat Barchetta OR
  
• The Peugeot 307 Convertible

The Mazda and the Fiat are both nice, little convertibles, seating two each. They are virtually indistinguable, but I am tending vaguely towards the former, as I fondly remember my little Mazdy (God rest his little soul driving around in Poland et al.). The Peugeot seats four people but is the most expensive and also rather new, hence not available in an used version...

Decisions, decisions.