Last Saturday I walked out the door to find that the arse end of my car was closer to the ground than it should have been. Turns out I had two flat tyres.
I was fully prepared to accept that two punctures could easily happen, even though they were on opposite sides of the car (call me naive); or that a couple of kids may have been having a laugh and decided to see what would happen if they let the air out. But the slash marks?
Was it you who slashed my tyres? You can tell me, I’ll keep it to myself.
Something like this shakes your faith in humanity. I used to believe that most people were inherently good; that given the chance most of us do the right thing most of the time. Now I’m not so sure.
Why would someone do something like this?
What are the chances that a complete stranger walking by on the street would make a detour into a private car park, pick the car parked in the farthest corner, and slash two tyres? Pretty close to zero I would imagine. So where does that leave me? There are fifteen flats in my block. Does one of them house a vandal with a stanley knife? Should I be staring accusingly at all my neighbours as I walk past? Maybe it’s the old lady with the Zimmer frame who lives in the flat below?
Who have I offended?
Fair enough, the car doesn’t get out much, but it’s always neatly parked. Perhaps the person responsible is part of a militant Free the Cars group, whose aim is to see all cars set free to roam the highways and byways of England unshackled. My limited driving habits may have been seen as ‘keeping a car in cruel and unusual circumstances.‘
Or maybe the perpetrator was part of a shady special operations team for one of the big oil companies. My ability to get by with one tank of petrol every two months may have been seen as the start of a worrying trend that had to be ruthlessly stamped on before it took hold in the general population.
Was it because it was a Ford Fiesta? Did my car lower the tone of the area? Were house prices dipping because my other car really wasn’t a porsche?
So where do I live, you may ask, that things like this would happen for no apparent reason?
The Tory heartland of the south east - East Molesey, Surrey.
I moved here because it was convenient for work, and the flat was nicely decorated. Something bothered me about the area from day one though, and it only took me a few days to work out what that something was. Walk down any street, day or night, and every face you see will be white.
East Molesey is upper middle class suburbia. Every house has two or more cars - chances are one of them is a porsche and the other an SUV. It goes without saying that the SUV has never been off road, and the green wellies in the back were not bought at Woolworths. Families consist of Mom, Dad, and two kids. Even the dog votes Conservative.
The reprobate responsible for assaulting my tyres probably used a stanley knife bought from John Lewis. There is no PoundStretcher in East Molesey, and even if there were, they wouldn’t sell stanley knives with genuine leather grips.
I’ve lived all over London: Wood Green, Fulham, Wimbledon, Harlesden, Palmers Green, Hounslow, Feltham, South Kensignton, and Bloomsbury. I’ve lived in different towns across Great Britain: High Wycombe, Bedford, Boston, Southampton. But I’ve never lived anywhere like East Molesey.
There’s plenty of money around here; lots of well packaged kids and families - all wearing the right clothes, driving the right cars, and going to the right schools.
But I don’t like it anymore.
