Yesterday's scary activity

For years, I've always thought of those petrol station car wash services as a waste of money. Because, if you want your car cleaned, it only takes 20 minutes to soap, spray and wipe it yourself. But as I haven't managed to wash my car once, in the 18 months we have owned it, I decided to throw money at the situation and take it to the car wash.

Remember, this was the first time I'd ever been in one of those automated thingummies.

First of all, I couldn't work out how to get my side mirrors to fold in, as the sign instructed. So while I was in there I worried that they would snap off with the pressure of those enormous rubbery brushes.

And the other thing was that it's really noisy, it makes the whole car vibrate, and from the inside it looks and feels as though I'm being attacked by an oversized, multi-coloured St Bernard dog. Or a creature from a comedy version of Supernatural.

Even the hot-air-blowing gadget made me nervous. How did it know not to hit the roof of my car?

I was glad I hadn't taken TLM with me - she was at daycare - because I could imagine her being at least as uncomfortable (okay...scared) as I was.