DCSIMG

Only explanation: The elephant did it

Question Time event held at The County Council.

Question Time event held at The County Council.


Published on Friday 27 January 2012 15:22

SO there I was enjoying my new second-hand Audi: spotting Audis on TV and alerting everyone in the household, spotting Audis in the street, and alerting everyone in the street, even spotting Audis while I was driving my own new second-hand Audi and not for one moment thinking: “Oh, everyone’s got one.”

Bonnie, my three-year-old fairy-princess daughter had stopped calling the car a car and was now calling it an Audi. That was how much she had heard the word.

It was almost as good as having a new phone. I was giving the kids lifts anywhere, whether they wanted to be there or not. I was enjoying it far too much.

What was going on?

A lot of the time I find myself, both accidentally and deliberately, not fitting in. A shaven-headed hippie. A gym-junkie (OK, that’s a lie) who smokes (OK, that’s the truth). A cyclist with a Toad of Toad Hall regard for cars.

I’m the kind of person who answers a straight question with the words: “It depends . . .”

So when I found myself behind the wheel of my very own new second-hand Audi, in a suit, in my 40s, I suddenly realised that I had unexpectedly docked with civilisation. I wasn’t just fitting in, I was tessalating.

My One True Love – when I asked what I’ve been up to lately – can finally answer without having to say something like: “He’s been inventing a new version of Dungeons and Dragons” or “collecting toilet rolls to make a marble roller coaster”.

She can now say: “He’s in his Audi, in a suit, in his 40s, just like a normal bloke.”

She could say that last week anyway, but not this week. I’m not in my Audi this week.

On Monday morning My One True Love rang me from outside the house.

“You better come out here. Prepare yourself,” she said and rang off.

The Audi was on the pavement. I had definitely left it on the road the night before. It seemed to have jumped two feet to its right, not particularly tidily but I didn’t even know it could jump.

Then I saw the crunched front wing and the ominously oily fluid dripping from the wheel arch.

We should have heard something. How could we not have heard something?

The damage didn’t seem to be in the right place for it to have been hit by a car travelling in the correct direction down our one way street.

Perhaps a tipsy lady elephant staggered down the road, leant on it to take her shoes off and then tip-toed away having prevented the scuffing of her high heels from attracting anyone’s attention to the damage she had caused.

My car had already been caught on CCTV inadvertently straying into a newly designated bus lane in Hemel Hempstead because I am letting an out of date satnav take too many important decisions in my life.

But where were the cameras when my poor battered Audi needed them?

I still don’t know what happened. The elephant theory actually fits all the known facts. For a moment I was prepared to believe that this was a ruthless application of Sod’s Law due to my Audi overjoy.

I approached it all with some perspective however, because this week my eldest son was taken away from a rugby field in an ambulance.

Fortunately it was just a knock but if I could choose which kind of knocks were to be inflicted on my family, I would take the car kind any day.


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Saturday 26 May 2012

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