TO THE BLOKE WHO LEFT THE NOTE

See the scratch? No, not that one, the other one. No, not THAT other one,
that's just mud. The OTHER other one

Car parking at the gym is an issue.

My gym is part of a swimming pool complex which means there seems to be a never ending series of swimming lessons, school swimming sports and generally a lot of dripping people wandering around wrapped in towels.

My gym also provides a full timetable of Les Mills exercise classes and if all that stuff happens at the same time, the car park, which is actually fairly large, ends up being not fairly large enough.

This inevitably leads to that style of avant-garde parking peculiar to busy mums in 4WDs. You know what I mean; if the marked spaces are all occupied, any other car-sized space becomes a park. Footpaths, traffic islands, entrance foyers... that's the whole point of owning an RV to begin with, right? Surely if it can drive anywhere, it can PARK anywhere.

I'm not a busy mum and I drive a Corolla, so I tend to shun the whole "improvisational" parking philosophy. If I can't locate an empty slot immediately on arrival, I prefer to just hover a few minutes between the 1st and 2nd rows (where the through traffic is a bit lighter) until someone wearing a towel comes out and makes their soggy exit.

This is certainly inconvenient and some days I can't be bothered waiting at which point I make an executive, America's Cup Race Director-style decision and just call the whole thing off for the day. Unlike the America's Cup competitors though, I never really wanted to go to the gym in the first place, so it's nice to have a tangible excuse to justify my extreme laziness.

The ironic thing here is, I only live just around the corner. In the time I waste searching for an elusive parking space, I could just as easily drive home and walk back. (If I can circumnavigate the collection of 4WDs parked on the footpath, obviously)

But occasionally all the planets align, an unoccupied park presents itself and I am left with no other option than to physically leave my vehicle, enter the gym itself and do some exercise. I hate it when that happens.

Last week, I spent 45 minutes hating it even more than usual, staggered out to my car, (I've heard about post-exercise endorphin rushes, but they don't seem to apply to me) flopped into my driver's seat and noticed a notice.

This is one of my most hated things in the whole world; flyers left under your windscreen wipers. You never see them till you're behind the wheel, then you fool yourself into thinking you can reach them by sticking your arm out the window, which you never can, which you really should have remembered before you tried and failed yet again, which just results in even more frustration, especially when the flyer turns out to be advertising an innovative new hair-removal technique. Not something I plan on having a great deal of use for. Ever.

Not this time though. This time it wasn't that kind of note. This note was hand-written and said, "We scracht your car a bit." There was a phone number as well. 

Mixed feelings at this point, obviously. Pretty pissed off about the big white swipe smeared down the side of my car. Bit of a legend for leaving some contact details though.

I rang him and he told me to get a quote and he'd flick me the dosh to cover it. Bit more of a legend. I went to get the quote and the panel beater came out with a rag and wiped the damage off. Quite embarrassing. The panel beater suggested he write up a quote anyway so I could have a nice dinner out on the guy who dinged my car.

That's not how I roll.

Would've served him right for spelling "scratched" wrong though.

Amazingly, I'm not that interested in this kind of advertising.
And no, that isn't me in the picture