Unforeseen Consequences of the Fact that Our Fence is a Car Magnet

So I had to run out this morning to buy some groceries; with semester two starting up, my father-in-law is back to doing his evening classes and coming around to dinner once a week. (I’m planning on making homemade baked beans, but that’s not important right now.)

But, of course, it’s pouring here this morning.

In fact, as I’m sure reluctant Rain God Rob McKenna would tell you, so far we’ve moved through rain types 33 (“light pricking drizzle which made the roads slippery”) to everything between types 47 to 51 (“vertical light drizzle through to sharply slanting light to moderate drizzle freshening”), with occasional bursts of type 11 (“breezy droplets”).

And it made me aware of how awkward things have become in the wake of the four cars that have driven through our fence.

First, I had to dash past an over-enthusiastic (and extremely damp) type of Chinese jasmine, across a muddy lawn in trousers that were slightly too long, down a slippery set of brick stairs, and into the garage.

Only the garage door doesn’t open very readily since my car was pushed through it in collision number two (which buckled the frame). My mother can’t open it at all. So it’s actually a few minutes of swearing and tugging frantically at a slippery metal handle before the door opens.

(My greatest source of envy right now? The friend whose garage door opens remotely. But, I admit, she tells me the fuse blows occasionally and then she has to climb in through a window. Every silver lining has a cloud, I suppose.)

Then it’s up the driveway (steeply sloping, to boot) to open the gates.

Only the gates don’t open that readily, either.

The right-hand gate was smashed off in collision number two, and the left-hand gate badly damaged. But the latter wasn’t really broken until collision number three a month later; we hadn’t had the damage repaired, yet, so the car just sailed through the open space and took out the next section of fence.

So when the gate was replaced, they added heavy-duty steel frames.

But then collision number four buckled the hinges of the right-hand gate.

So opening them is now a major production, especially in the rain: they have to be pushed out towards the footpath before they’ll open at all, and then dragged back inwards. And they won’t stay open, so we have loops of twine that have to be located and attached to the latches to stop the gates swinging back and dinging the car.

All in the rain.

Then it’s reversing the car out, leaving it in park, and dashing back down to close the garage door. But it doesn’t close any more readily than it opens, so it’s a few minutes of shoving the left-hand corner with your foot to force the door closed.

Really, it all seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

And that’s before the actual process of reversing out blindly onto a dual-carriageway near a corner that people take so quickly that they keep driving through my fence.