Long story .............Feeling very very stupid :-(

Long story which I’ll try to keep short-ish – I FEEL SO STUPID!!!!

Buying a new car, old one submitted for part-ex earlier this week, had hire car all week. Due to collect new car today but lastmin.com bank c*ck up with the finance prevented. Instead of collecting new car spent an hour this morning at the dealer with bank chap resigning a load of forms. All on track to collect new car tomorrow, but I’m working odd hours and needed a car today & tomorrow for my evening shifts, DH will receive new car tmrw whilst I’m at work. Hire car due back today so in conversation whilst at the dealers I said ‘no worries I’ll call the car hire folk now & it extend 2 days’.

Dealer chap was distraught at thought of having to spend extra dosh on 2 more days of hire car and said ‘I have 2 cars with me today, my company car and my wife’s, she is away, you borrow it for 2 days’ We made a fuss and said we couldn’t possibly…..that’s way above and beyond the call of duty on his part!!!! But he insisted so I drove his wife’s Ford Focus to work (in AD) and back, and drove it like a glass carriage as it doesn’t belong to me, plus stuck religiously to the speed limits as getting a ticket would prove embarrassing!!! (we're buying a Dodge, his wifes Ford is not his second co car!).

Still trying to cut a long story short …….finished work 11.30pm & no traffic on the road got back to DXB in good time despite sticking to speed limits ……got to where we live to find a huge queue of trucks outside our place & I overshot our turning by about 10 metres due to trucks blocking the turning……ars’’ I thought!!! (live at trade centre, show breakdown going on, truck city!!!). Rather than sit in the queue for 20 mins (I was literally 30 secs from the front of our building), I thought I could reverse back into the outside lane of the service road by 10 metres to where the turning is and wait for a gap in the stationary trucks so I could turn in……………there was room to do so, just……………what I hadn’t appreciated is that I was driving someone else’s car and over the past few years I have become TOTALLY reliant on rear parking sensors, no sensors, misjudged the gap I was trying to get out of and SMACK, I reversed straight into the front of a Toyota Pick Up …………… B*LL*CKS!!!!!!! Not my car, not fair!!!! Me so stupid!!!!

In 22 years of driving I pride myself of never having an accident of any kind, ever, and I go and do something that stupid, in someone else’s car, in the UAE!!!!

Thank goodness, there is no more than a dirham sized chip from the black plastic bit of the Focus’s rear bumper….can barely see it at all unless you run your hand over it, and there’s already a pre existing larger dent on the other side …… I smashed one of the headlights of the Toyota pickup ….just the glass, not even the bulb ………… the chap (Indian) seemed ok with me offering to pay for the repair and agreed it seemed daft getting the police involved, so we swapped tel no’s and he said he reckoned it was around a 200AED repair and he’d call me ……….he actually seemed ok with it all, I was VERY apologetic ….I am now just praying he is good to his word and doesn’t get funny about the whole thing ……. I will happily pay for a new headlight for him, but we’ll see if he ends up trying to fleece me or worse he calls the police at a later date :-(

I’m feeling such a muppet right now & worrying like crazy there may be repercussions :-(

Thanks for reading ………….. didn’t manage to keep it short in the end, but needed to get it off my chest before I go to bed …..I hope you understand, I hope Mr Toyota is good to his word and there is a happy (albeit a few hundred Dirhams lighter) happy ending to this tale!!

Any wise comments on how you think this will pan out always appreciated.

Night night all

LL xxx