I drove into work this morning because it was so cold. On the way in, trying to change lanes (on the little ring, if you know Brussels), I had my wing mirror clipped by a speeding large car. I glared at him balefully and adjusted my mirror which was undamaged. At the next junction an elderly and oddly dressed gentleman came up to my window and tapped on it crossly. “You damaged my car†he said. We pulled in and had a look. Alas, his wing mirror had a small dent. It is so typical of me that as we sat in my car, I decided that, really, it was all my fault. This, despite the fact that he was wreathed in alcohol fumes. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t entirely sober either. He was retired. And despite his large car, which he confided was a hire car, he looked very poor and was wearing a strange assortment of tracksuit bottoms and tops. We filled in the accident form. This being Belgium, we ended up filling in the form in Dutch which neither of us understood very well because he had no copy in French and I only had an English copy. I dutifully marked that I had been trying to pull into his lane but refrained from remarking that he smelt of drink and had been driving very fast. Partly, it was my wishy-washiness but partly it was because I felt we could probably bear the cost of repair considerably better than he could. Anyway, we parted relatively amicably. However, after he had left the car, I noticed that there was a big damp patch on the passenger seat where he had been sitting. I suppose that we’ll all be old, drunk and incontinent some day.
