Some cars have two doors.

 One can only assume the owner of the Ford CMax parked next to me in the supermarket car park has only ever had cars with four doors.  If only as one should never attribute anything to malice which could be explained by incompetence.

I took Barrie (Alfa Brera) to the supermarket.  Barrie is very much my car but he is not a first choice for a supermarket run.  The boot is not the easiest to get heavy bags in and out of and really he is a car that suits a proper run out, not a local(ish) pootle.  On this occasion, however, Dilys (Fiat 500) was poorly.  She lost 1st, 2nd and reverse gears just as I was trying to reverse into the drive on Friday so she spent a lonely Friday night parked in front of the neighbour’s house until we could get her into the garage for a pampering session aka S fixing her cross gate cable!  Barrie had been overwintering in the garage so having changed places with Dilys ended up the first car in the drive when I needed to go out and I was too lazy to shunt cars around to get to Benji (Alfa 159 estate).  Now Dilys is also a 2 door car so the same problem would mostly likely have arisen but it would probably not have tested my flexibility to the max.

Knowing that the low down positioning and large heavy doors mean that a little space is required to get in and out I had parked some distance from the entrance of the supermarket with clear space all around me.  I had also, thankfully, put my seat fully back to make it easier to get back in.  This sort of aforethought is relatively new to me but I noticed what appeared to be some grey hair in the mirror this morning and I had a little twinge yesterday when I hit a tree root whilst digging in the garden so precautions seemed sensible.  

When I returned someone had parked in front of me - no problem there - and a Ford C Max was parked alongside Barrie’s driver’s side so close that, for a moment, I wondered whether Barrie’s wing mirrors might touch the Ford’s wing mirrors when I started it and they came out but I reached the conclusion they would go under a few milli seconds after realising I had no chance of getting in the door.  To be entirely fair I’m not sure I’d have been able to do it in a four door car.  I’m not that confident that, without careful manoeuvring I could have got my bottom through the gap.  I would be a bit like one of those school/church fete games where you need to negotiate a metal hoop around a wire without a buzzer going off or, in this case, without jean pocket studs scraping the paintwork.

Suffice to say recognising it wasn’t going to happen I got in the passenger side and climbed over in a legs over first and face pressed against the steering wheel sort of way.  Had I been in S’s Lotus Elise (which, again, is not an obvious supermarket choice and it is having a very, very slow engine rebuild) I would have had to get into the passenger seat, then removed the roof in order to step over into the driver’s side.

It has, I suppose, given me a rant for the day and I went home and made another batch of chocolate cornflake cakes by which time normal equilibrium had been restored!