Car Washes

So, I need to discuss car washes. (Discuss as in feel free to comment if you have any views on car washes at all!) Now, when I refer to ‘car washes’, I don’t mean those automated ones where you sit in an enclosed space for five minutes wondering if you have lined your car up correctly and it will come out in one piece. No, I mean the ‘hand wash’ ones where only one person speaks English and everything is conducted in hand signals.

You get beckoned forward and you creep slowly along to a point where suddenly the guy shoots out a hand in a firm STOP signal. You switch off the engine and sit back while people start spraying your vehicle with high powered jets of water; then it gets soaped up using giant sponges. At that point you get beckoned forward again, but after moving just seven inches you suddenly get the abrupt STOP hand-sign again. Nobody in the world knows why you have to move forward only seven inches and then stop again. After more vigorous soaping, water bombardment and random spraying - some weird stuff contained in a giant flask is sprayed all over the vehicle windscreen, bodywork and wheels, and you have no idea what it is because you can’t wind down the window and ask as you might end up with a ‘facefull’ of it and then have to watch in your rear-view mirror as your skin peels off - you get beckoned forward again 

By now you’re really nervous because you don’t know whether you should be going seven inches or driving forward positively. However, the expression on the ‘beckoning bloke’s’ face as you are inching along - a kind of ‘FFS, mate, get a move on, ain’t you ever driven a flippin’ car before’ look - encourages you to be a bit more ambitious until he pulls out the STOP hand again. You stop, switch off the engine while the car gets jetted some more, but just as you are beginning to relax, you get the ‘seven inch’ manoeuvre thrown at you again. You ease forward, stop again but then you don’t know whether to switch off the engine or leave it running. You leave it for a minute and then decide to switch off but just as you do, you get the hand signal to move forward. This time you pass through a giant ‘hairdryer’, not sure at what speed you should be going. Once through there, an army of blokes with chamois leathers descend on your car like war zone rioters and begin flanneling it down. You realise the ordeal is nearly over and begin to chill… until you spot the missed bit - two droplets of water just waiting to trickle down your side mirror. 

You watch the chamois bloke on your right side and you’re thinking, “C’mon, mate. You gotta see that… surely, you must. You can’t miss it.” He continues to chamois vigorously but somehow misses it and you say nothing because after all the water that’s been sprayed over your vehicle, it kind of seems ‘picky’ to complain about two solitary drops, even if they are irritating the hell out of you! Then, for no reason at all, someone comes along and starts painting your tyres black! They don’t even ask what colour you fancy. I guess it’s the old Henry Ford legend, “You can have any colour you want as long as it’s black.” 

And then the final touch. One of the guys knocks on your window; you wind it down and he hands you one of those scented ‘Christmas tree’ things that is supposed to make the inside of your car smell nice, but actually makes it smell like somebody’s conducted a chemical experiment in your vehicle that went wrong, and if you did hang it from your rear-view mirror it would knock ten percent off the value of your car the minute you drove away from the car wash! 

In fairness though, these guys do a good job. Not their fault I have no clue what’s going on!!