Sideswiped

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Off for a quick dip at Beau Vallon of a Friday eve, we pull into the adjacent car park that has one lone stationary car parked and another reversing (badly) into one of the squillion available places. The reversing vehicle doesn’t appear to spot us (a minor feat if you’ve seen how green our car is) and so the other one beeps. No reaction. He beeps again a bit more urgently. Still nothing. Realising that the best tactic is just get out the way flippin quickly, the other one throws us into reverse but too late, the guy clips the right hand side of our car and crunch, something makes a not very welcome noise.

Flibberty gibbert, said the mild mannered wife.

We get out as does the other guy and instead of apologising for his complete stupidity he tells us it’s our fault as we should have been at least 20ft away from him - really? The guys who come over who saw it happen didn’t seem to think so but they explain as it’s a car park on private land, it’s best that we come to some agreement with the guy. The other one presses for insurance details but the stupid (and drunk man) is not playing ball, repeatedly refusing to tell us his name and then settling on John. He thinks we’re as stupid as him.

We go round in circles, we offer to go halves on the damage, we take his license plate number, he says he has no telephone number, we give him ours - we know we’re getting nowhere. In the end, we just have enough and get in the car, too annoyed to swim so we sod off back home. We’ll never hear from him again.

Later we inspect the damage, the sidelight is smashed but the other one doesn’t think it’s that bad and thinks that it may have been cracked anyway. So we just ignore it. The car’s pretty much a shed so it won’t make much difference.

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