T-Bird Anni Rides Again

I go off to Rainbows at roughly the same time there is a shift change at the local Police Headquarters.  I try to leave just a little before 4 to avoid most of the chaos but don’t always manage and anyway, it’s a bit of a trade off between being really very early for Rainbows for the sake of an easier exit off the estate vs being in good time for Rainbows and getting peeved about the volume of traffic.  Today I would have been in good time, but as I stopped half way accross the main road to join the traffic (there’s a central reservation type thing so that you can get half way then throw yourself into the traffic when you see a gap) I sort of lurched forward with a rather loud bang.  Now, being a dizzy bint I thought I’d stalled (despite foot still being on clutch   ) but then realised that stalling isn’t loud :wall: So, pulled through the traffic to the side of the road, got out and sure enough my car’s rear end has been re-modelled   The lad that hit me fessed up and repeated that it was all his fault and how sorry he was several times (to the point I was beginning to worry about concussion!!) and we swapped details.  No one else stopped although several people must have seen it happen.  Did I mention that the traffic is from the Police HQ?  Does that not speak volumes for our caring Police force?

So then I was late for Rainbows.  But never mind, I was still there before my parent helper who rushed in all flustered and apologising a few minutes after me, having been stuck in traffic.  Rainbows went well, we were doing Thinking Day stuff which I’m going to save and use again as it’s pointless re-inventing the wheel when non of this lot will be still with me next Thinking Day! In fact I’m trying to ammass a stack of ready to go meetings on various themes but I’m sort of hampered by lack of storage space really…

Duke came and looked at the car and declared it to be a fair bit of damage - door is buckled, there’s paint gone all the way down to the metal along the impact line, the lower hinge appears to be stuffed as the door drops a few inches when you open it (makes closing the back door a total pain as now I have to lift it up and push at the same time), rear bumper is cracked, the wrap arround bit of bumper on my side is cracked all the way down and the sill is bent in, thankfully the hugely difficult to get exhaust missed the impact otherwise I’d be really very very hacked off, although I may still get to that state if any of the bits are equally rare as hens teeth (NEVER EVER buy a brand new model of car because after 12 months they will change the design just a bit and yours will be obsolete and ridiculously hard to get replacement body bits for!)

This evening I braced myself to start sorting out the insurance, phoned Direct Line who took the details and said "no problem, you will get a phonecall within 2 days to sort out when you want it taking for repair and what hire car you are getting"  so that was nice!  Aparently we don’t mess about getting multiple quotes these days, it’s just dealt with.

And all of this was made oh so much easier to cope with because Aprilia was at Nelly’s so wasn’t in the car and in fact is still at Nelly’s as she’s decided to have another go at a sleep over but this time she’s in a different room from Nelly so I’m hoping that she will therefore sleep!