When we first moved, 26 years ago, to the area in which we now live, from a home we previously owned not all that far from our present one, where we had lived for 20 years, there was precious little in the way of commercial establishments in comparison to what exists now. Oh, if we were feeling energetic it took a mere 30 minutes to walk, for example, to limited shopping, a library, dentists, medical facilities, so it could never be said we were ill-served. There were schools in handy walking distance and any number of green parks with exercise equipment for children installed.

But the past decade has seen both a steep rise in the population nearby and the construction of huge plazas and opening of big box stores, supermarkets, individual shops galore selling all manner of consumer products. We never have to drive very far to find whatever it might be we're looking for in furniture, clothing, food, restaurants, medical centres, veterinarians, and oh yes, garages for car maintenance and repair.

It took me years to persuade my husband, who over his working career was a civil servant, a government bureaucrat, not a garage mechanic, to take his vehicles in for servicing rather than go through the protracted and potentially dangerous job of changing oil in his vehicles himself. And for the past several years he finally agreed.

Yesterday my husband took his little pick-up truck in to a local garage for the usual maintenance reflected by an oil change. He's a stickler for getting that done, even though in the last six months he's hardly taken the truck out of the garage. He decided to wait around while the job was done, since they weren't busy and took him on right away. Today he drove his passenger car to the same garage. They maintain a shuttle service where they can drive people who live in the immediate area back home until it's time to pick up their vehicle.

When my husband took the car in for servicing, he was driven back home. And then we went out for our usual ravine walk. It's a cold day, but not inordinately so, with a high of about minus-2 C. degrees and a bit of a wind. When he was called by the garage to advise him that the car was ready to be picked up, he decided to forego the shuttle service, and instead we left Jackie and Jillie at home and set out ourselves to walk over to the garage.

From our street it's about a twenty- to thirty-minute walk. It's not as pleasant as walking on a forest trail, but it's a good way of getting about, regardless. We walked through a number of nearby streets, then approached a major artery and from there, walking steadily, made our way to the shopping area where the garage, located within a big box store specializing in automotive goods of all descriptions, large and small was our destination.

When we first moved to this area the vast pieces of landscape that now host hundreds of stores extended through green fields and held a water tower, nothing else. That water tower still stands, surrounded by a forest of buildings selling services and goods on a mind-boggling scale. The walk down to that area was pleasant enough, and we accomplished our goal, to pick up the serviced car. Getting out and about needn't always result in shuttling back and forth in a vehicle. Even though there's a silly irony in committing to walking a distance in the interests of acquiring a vehicle.