This afternoon I realised that we’ve lived in Dunfermline for nearly eight months and we have yet to wash either of our cars. We’re not very good at washing cars, I’m afraid - just as we’re not very good at cutting the grass or doing the garden (though young Gavin from Church has said he’ll take over the garden I think!). But that still leaves the car.
Of course, where we lived before in Perthshire it didn’t really matter because it was rural and the roads were covered in mud so everyone’s car was always dirty - and no-one cared anyway! Here it’s different. Now we live in middle class suburbia and it’s expected that we’ll attend to such things. Certainly, nearly everyone else does and now, as the weather’s warming up and the grass cutting season has arrived again, the light evenings and and the weekends are filled with the noise of lawnmowers and hedge-cutters and strimmers and the gutter is full of foam and dirty water as cars are washed and hosed down.
Honestly! You’d think they’d find something more interesting to do!
But, since we’re going on holiday tomorrow and since our car seems to have been a magnet for bird mess over the last few weeks, I decided I should do something about it. And so I did something I’ve never done before. I took the car to the car wash . . .
. . . Well, OK, I’ve been to the car wash lots of times before - but not to one like this. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever even come across this before. But in Dunfermline, they have what I think they call ‘Car Foam Washes’. Basically, you drive into a sort of filling station type forecourt, and sit in your car while someone else washes it for y
ou. Or, in my case, two people. It was like a sort of conveyor belt. First of all someone rinses, soaps and washes the car, then you get beckoned forward a bit, and some one else rinses it it off and waxes it. It all takes about five minutes and afterwards it was spotless. I was very impressed!
For years I’ve taken my cars to ordinary, unmanned, car washes and been disappointed. This was a welcome change - and also great to see something bucking the trend towards greater mechanisation and less human involvement. In a time when it’s now the accepted norm that if you phone a bank or other big organisation you’ll end up typing numbers into your phone rather than actually speaking to a real human being it was refreshing to see six people at work and to get the personal touch!
I will go again - probably in about 8 months!