Karma

Well the smug smile on my face was not there for very long.

Disaster struck as I backed the car out of the drive and three things happened within moments of each other.

1 I was too lazy to walk to the end of the drive and open the gate completely. We are not talking about a long walk either; our house is no Pemberley and the grounds and pleasure gardens are not extensive. The high winds during the night had closed the gate a little, sufficient to make it a significantly smaller space than usual.

2 I didn’t bother to de-smear the two wing mirrors which were covered in the unsavoury Breton mist which passes for fresh air here in winter. As were all the car windows. These were even closer at hand than the gate, but were, well, outside the relatively warm dry inside of the car when I noticed them.

3 I started to wonder whether it was worth stopping to get out my mp3 player so that I could go through the songs that my students will be singing in a concert on Sunday week, and I stopped thinking about what I was actually doing, which was backing out through a small gap, half blind..

No, make that four things that happened;

I hit the concrete gatepost with a loud crash. You saw that coming didn’t you. Well, I didn’t.

I was on the way to an appointment for a car service. Yes, that’s right, a visit to rectify any minor problems with the car...