Robyn Anderson

It was our second hot day for the year. When I say hot I think it was 35-36 C which when you come from a summer of mid 20’s or lower, it’s quite a shock. Some of us function better at a few degrees higher than normal whereas others wilt on a mild day with lots of cloud cover. On a hot day they go to sleep in their reclining chair. I wasn’t wilting. I had a list of things I needed to do and I was going to do them. I walked out the front of our house and saw the blue car parked at right-angles across the garage door. I won’t wake him up, I thought, as I unhooked the cover he’d placed over it to stop the sun heaing up the interior. I’ll just get the keys that he’s bound to have left in the car. Yep. He did leave some keys in the car but they were for a different vehicle so I went inside to find them. Not very quietly either. I found the keys and went back outside (not very quietly), and started the blue car. Couldn’t reach the pedals so I adjusted the seat with the only knob available and it rose up. Hardly helpful. I finally found the adjusting-the-seat bar and slid the seat forward. Big sigh. Why is life so damned difficult? I started the car and sat for a second or two until I remembered it was a manual. I put it in reverse and backed away from the garage door and in line with the driveway. My left foot depressed the clutch, I put the car into first gear and hit the accelerator – at exactly the same time as the seat shot backwards leaving me looking like a kid pretending to drive. Only I was actually driving and going very, very quickly towards the hedge. I stopped just as the front nosed into the mass of foliage. Words were said, seats were slammed securely back into place and the car straightened up. And left. I raised the garage door, backed out my car with it’s automatic transmission and tight lock and in no time at all I was fleeing the scene of the crime laughing my head off. I do believe the neighbours will have to put that one ahead of the time I fell off my bike before I even got on it. Thank goodness there was no-one there when I backed into that fence.