It’s a small complaint. In a world where people starve, kill each other and worse, this is going to sound like an absurd middle-class whinge. Which it is, but here goes anyway.
It rained yesterday. Not just the ordinary rain that we get on a regular basis, but the really heavy stuff that bounces off the pavement, runs down the street and overwhelms the gutters. I’d rather have 2 hours of that than the usual 3 days of drizzle but it came right at the time of the school run. So by the time I’d walked up the school drive, through the flooded playground and back down to the car park I was pretty soaked.
The school car park was a mass of three-point turns and kamikazi parents in family cars. As I manoeuvred out of the car park my stress levels were up, but I made it out and set off. Taking a deep breath and relaxing, I accelerated over 10mph. In a BMW that is the point at which the car decides you are properly moving. Accordingly, the doors locked and the parking sensors switched off. And the little sensor that knows whether the doors are shut properly decided to tell me that the back door wasn’t shut properly.
It had known this from the second I closed it. Before I got into the car. Before I started the engine. Before I engaged first gear. Before I released the handbrake. Instead of troubling me with this crucial information whilst I was in the car park, stationary and able to rectify my mistake, it waited for me to exit a junction and enter a one way street with no safe place to stop. That, it judged, was the perfect time to tell me that my toddlers door wasn’t closed properly.
If anyone from Munich, or indeed anywhere on Planet Earth, can tell me why that is a good idea then I’d love to hear it. Right now it has pissed me off enough to put me right off the blue propeller for good.