Wednesday 20 April 2011

You should see my kitchen floor

I take the car to a valet service and park it to the side. This is obviously out of the ordinary. The man in charge of the cleaners - all tall men and very muscly - comes over to me, frowning, and dismissively nods his head towards the queue for the car wash. He orders, 'over there'.

He thinks I'm here for a normal 30-minute makeover. The one where I drive it through the foamy brushes, they give it a once-over with the shake and vac, then I pay fifteen pounds.

I say, nervously, 'Can you have a look first?' I open the back door. He says nothing, but stares. Then he calls over two of the other muscle men. They stare too. One of them, looking like an action hero in his combat trousers, turns to me and shakes my hand. Then he says, in a quiet accent that sounds Eastern European, 'I've never seen anything like it in all my life'.

I feel both dismayed and a little pleased. Dismayed that I have been driving what looks like a battlefield from the Bosnian War. Pleased that I am a woman able to impress a man who bears a passing resemblance to Jean-Claude Van Damme.

6 comments:

RuralDiversity said...

thank you for allowing me a smug "my car might be cleaner than that" moment.
And, thank you for the triplet post. My youngest daughter is a friend of little girl triplets. It's hard to imagine what it's like but I can understand loneliness as I parent at a different freak-show (autism). Thank you for giving me a place to connect to their mum.

Irene said...

I really liked your 'triplet post.' I have no experience like it, but I could sure empathize with you when I read it. You certainly made it clear how the experience had been for you and probably for the other moms of multiples. We 'ordinary' moms don't think about that. I didn't realize how tough it had been for you. Why didn't you have help?

sharon said...

You really shouldn't keep leaving the corpses of passing truancy officers in there!


;-)

MadameSmokinGun said...

I think car interior sharing is a very healthy thing. Well, despite the health hazard bit. It's a bonding thing between parents - it only becomes suddenly horrific when you foolishly agree to pick up an adult one evening, pull up outside and the penny drops. You then find yourself frantically covering every surface with blankets as in Pulp Fiction and hope there's not too much snapping noises when they sit down.

Sally said...

Hi
Just wanted to say congratulations and let you know that your blog has been nominated in the MAD Blog Awards for UK parent blogs.
If you’d like to find out more about the awards and the prizes on offer, then head over to www.the-mads.com.
We will be publishing details of all the nominees in all the categories on Monday morning, and nominations are open until 5pm that day – so if you’d like to take part, make sure you encourage all your friends, family and readers to keep nominating!
Best of luck and well done on your nomination.
Sally
The MAD Blog Awards

Grit said...

hi folks, and thank you for your comments.

great ad, sally. i am sure to attract lots of votes.