Driving me crazy

26 April 2008

Melissa Kite leads a Real Life

If television bosses ever get really desperate for cheap viewing, they could always follow me with a hand-held camera as I pigheadedly attempt to drive my car around London. This once simple act now generates an unfeasibly high number of dramatic incidents which would make for excellent prime-time entertainment.

I’ve thought long and hard about why this should be so and it seems to me that my enmeshment in chav-esque motoring dramas bears a direct correlation to Labour assuming power in the capital. I can only conclude that, as a subversive who has defied massive financial penalties to continue driving, I have been singled out by agents of the state to suffer more radical punishments designed to extinguish my desire to move myself about.

For example, last week I was sitting in a queue of traffic on a quiet road in Balham, gateway to the housing slump, when suddenly the car in front started to reverse into me. It was clear that he was attempting to park in a space to the right of me, a manoeuvre which involved him hitting my car first in order to get into it. Now, I know parking is at a premium in London but I thought this a bit excessive.

I could not go backwards to avoid him as there was a car behind me. And so I was forced to sit and watch the black BMW five series crunch my little Peugeot’s bumper into an ugly mess in order to get itself into the gap outside a house. And as it did so I noticed that it had Polish number plates.

To be truthful, I think I may at that point have made a few measured comments to myself about Eastern European migration putting pressure on public services. Nevertheless, I decided that I must extend the hand of British courtesy as the driver emerged from his car. I stopped debating, fixed him with an EU-approved smile, which could not be said to violate his human rights, and said firmly, ‘Insurance?’ To which he replied, ‘Don’t worry. I got real good insurance. Is good for me, is good for you...’

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