The correct answer is you should probably check with your neighbours and call the authorities… That’s not what I did.
About a year ago, I came home from shopping one morning to find out that someone had parked their car in my drive.
As you can possibly tell from the picture, my drive is directly in front of my house. There's no grey area about who this space belongs to.
I was incensed about it. How does someone do that? Why would they do that? How could anybody be so brazen as to park directly on someone's drive? I posted about it on Twitter and asked people what I should do.
Plenty of suggestions came in. Let the tyres down. Scratch a swastika onto their bonnet. Hide a dead body in the boot. They were all admirable ideas. But once I'd calmed down, I came up with something that appealed to me far more.
I couldn't get something out of my head about this car.
It was so dirty. Not splattered in mud, red shells and body parts dirty, just grubby. I'm no neat freak, but I couldn't let this go.
I wasn't as wound up any more. I'd probably told a friend they could park there for an exam and I'd forgotten about it. A few days earlier I'd handed in my final piece of work for uni and it was a halcyon Summer day that I should really take advantage of. I had absolutely nothing to do that morning so I thought I'd just go with my gut feeling.
I lathered up a soapy fist and got to work!
Yeah, I thought I'd just wash the car. Getting those stains out would satisfy me far more than plain violence. It's also a lot less likely that I'd get put in jail for it too, nothing scares me more than getting in trouble with the police (or my Mother).
Shine motherfu-car!
Yeah, that's right stranger! You got one clean car now boy-o, that's gonna make you re-think your selfish parking practices.
Welcome to Surrey!
