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| Taken for a ride
It was cold outside, it was cold inside. And the gale force, real Cape Town style, locked most people inside their homes. We had no heater in the house except for the one blanket; we stayed in bed. Then we discovered that we had nothing to eat. We got into the car. On Main Road corrugated iron fell down from a roof onto the road, right in front of the car. I was thinking how lucky we were; those sheet metal things can cause a lot of damage, scratches. When the word 'lucky' entered my head the rest of the flat roof came crashing down and fell on top of the car; huge beams with nails and bolts destroying the windshield, bending the steering-column and the cracked, sunbeaten dashboard. Beams that came vertically down sliced through the metal as if someone was cutting a birthday cake. One piece of wood really dug in, managed to break the clutch pedal. Another went crashing through the drivers' door, the window exploding in our faces. We sat there frozen in case more junk would come down, perhaps the grand finale, to kill us off; a huge scewer going through both our heads, or something dramatic like that. And we were waiting for the funny bit to happen. There had to be a funny bit, the roof of a house falling on top of your car has something funny about it. No funny bit happened. Or? I opened the door and wiped the glass off of me. This would have been the right moment for Oliver Hardy to say 'Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!' Sure, we were lucky. But having that car fixed, it was fixed and don't ask me how they did it, cost me an arm and a leg. 26.May.2007 |