Post 38 – Women Drivers

Today I went to the 27th Annual Geneva Motor Show – the biggest car exhibition in the world. At only £5 for a ticket and £1.20 for the 20 minute bus ride to get there, it seemed a fun and cost effective way to spend the day. 3 hours I spent in the Palexpro – Geneva’s answer to the AECC. Though if you take the AECC, make it about 8 times bigger, and fill it with cars, you get an idea of what the Geneva Motor Show is like. An enormous, sprawling building that seems to go on forever. All day my senses were attacked with beautiful, shiny Jaguars, BMWs, Ferraris, Porchses, Maserratis, Chryslers, Corvettes, Mazdas, Dodges, Chevrolets, Cadillacs and much, much more (including Ladas, oddly). Each company’s stand was more eye-catching than the next, with gadgets, flashy lights, free goody bags, big TV screens and the likes designed to drag you in to look at their latest cars, and each car was accompanied by a stunning girl, elegantly dressed in evening wear or something elegant, smiling and greeting everyone who came near their car, though I would wager not a lot of them knew a hell of a lot about cars. Highlight for me included seeing Michael Schumacher’s 2006 Ferrari F1 and Jenson Button’s 2007 Honda, and the spectacular Fiat stall with it’s weird and wonderful design, oddities and curiosities inside, and the array of beautiful girls all dressed identically head to toe in white – a spectacle it may have been, but it didn’t change the fact that the cars were still Fiats.

As the day drew to a close, I hopped on the number 5 bus back to the main city hospital, which is just a ten minute walk to my flat, and it was while on that ten minute walk that mayday took a turn for the bizarre. I was rounding the corner and about to head up a steep hill, when a large, fat, black woman in a head scarf approached me.

“Excusez-moi monsieur!” she exclaimed, quite agitated. “Aidez-moi! Aidez moi”
(Excuse me sir, help me, help me, for those who didn’t manage to pick that out)
“OK, what’s wrong?” I ask in English.
“Blah blah blah blah mon voiture!” is all I hear next.
(Blah blah blah blah my car!)
“Oh you want the car park? It’s over there I think” I say, pointing at what may or may not be the car park.
“blah blah blah blah some French stuff blah blah blah blah”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French. Je parle Anglais.” I say.
She then starts waving her arms at me. “Ici! Ici!”
(Come here! Come here!)
I follow her up the hill to where it becomes obvious why she is having a problem with her car. In front of me, parked at the side of the road and pointing up the hill is a spanking new Renault Megane Scenic. Embedded about a foot into the front of the Renault is a beat up old Toyota Corolla with more dings and dimples than a golf ball, the rear end of which is still halfway out into the middle of the road. The Toyota’s driver door is open and a similarly dressed black woman is standing next to it, looking like she’s about to cry. About 6 inches behind the Toyota is a brand spanking new Chrysler Voyager. It takes me about a second to work out what has happened. The two women were driving down the hill looking for a parking space. Probably due to someone being behind her and the extreme impatience of the drivers in Switzerland, she has swung into a space far too quickly, realised too late that there isn’t enough room to fit a Toyota Corolla into it, and belted it, at speed, into the front of the Renault. Realising then that she is almost wedged in, and it’s going to be quite a tricky manoeuvre to get it out again without taking the front off the Chrylser as well, she has decided then to grab the first passing man and get him to fix it instead. I step up.

“You! Fixy! Sorty! Sorty!” she says.
“You want me to help push it out?” I ask, wondering if my puny frame can push a Toyota Corolla backwards up a hill.
“No” she says, “you drive.”

I don’t particularly want to get behind the wheel of the Toyota for a few reasons, such as
A) the wheel, handbrake, mirrors, gearstick et all are on the wrong side and I’ve never driven a left hand drive before.
B) I have no insurance.
C) It seems inevitable that the owner of the Renault is going to come out and see me driving a car which is buried into the front of his car, then start yelling at me in French.
D) I’m not sure if, even with my 10 years behind the wheel without an accident, I can get it out of there without pranging the Chrysler as well. She has done a great job of wedging it in.
E) It’s a saloon and I drive a hatchback, which is miles easier to judge when reversing.

However being a sucker for a damsel in distress, I suck it up, take the keys and get behind the wheel. It’s going to take some delicate clutch action to get it out without hitting the Chrysler, and there are still cars careering down the hill behind me at speed. Everything is the wrong way round, which throws me to begin with. I wind down the window and wave all the cars approaching past me until the road is clear. Then I start the engine, put it in reverse, raise the clutch till it bites, accelerate like hell to make sure I can get up the hill backwards, drop the handbrake and start to pull backwards. The sound of crunching plastic and twisting metal overpower the sound of my revving, and keeping an eye on my mirrors I manage to manoeuvre out into the street, missing the Chrysler by about 3 inches. Triumphantly, I smile and turn off the engine.

“Now in here!” the woman says, pointing at the spot she has so spectacularly managed to fuck up parking in.
“There’s not enough room” I tell her. “Too small. Tres petit”. But this doesn’t put her off, she is determined I am going to park her car for her. In truth, I can’t park for hit and may do an even worse job of it than her. But, staring at the mangled front of the Megane, I slowly try to park the Toyota, but the space is simply too small, and the ass end is still in the street. Not wanting to be outdone, I go forward and start to reverse into the tiny space, when the woman has a change of heart and tells me to stop. So, half parked, I get out, and her and her friend, after briefly thanking me for my endeavours, climb into the Toyota (which barely has a scratch on it, well, not a fresh one anyway) and get the hell out of Dodge post-haste, leaving me standing alone in front of a quite obviously newly bashed up Renault Megane. I wonder for a second if perhaps I am on some Swiss hidden camera show, then after looking around to see if anyone has witnessed this, I follow suit and continue my trek home. Is leaving the scene of an accident without reporting it illegal even if you weren’t directly involved in the accident? Up until now I haven’t gotten a knock on my door from the Megane driver, the police, or the Swiss equivalent of Jeremy Beadle, so I figure I’m in the clear.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Rock n Roll High School” by The Ramones.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk