Had a shock coming down Oxford Street (no not that one, the Sheffield one) today. Was driving the car with Lola in the back. The car in front stopped to wait to turn right. I stopped behind it. Tum te tum. A few cars coming the other way - we’re there 10 or 15 seconds.

CRUUUNCH!! A car squashes into the back of me. Took me a while to work out what it was, I was hardly expecting it. Lola and I were both fine - the car hardly moved. Switched off the engine and got out to speak to the driver of the other car - a youngish bloke with a moustache and a car full of mates (5 of them, I think). He wound down his window and said “sorry mate, I’m just on the way to get me brakes fixed”.

I’m fairly mellow at the time, though my thoughts are a bit rushed. My car is sitting there looking almost pristine (in fact there was one scuff on the back bumper, and a tiny scratch on one of the lights) - thank Swedish engineering once again for the bumpers of a Saab 900. The car that hit me, on the other hand, is a sorry sight. Bits of headlight everywhere, crumbled bodywork on his D-Reg Peugot 305.

So I say to him “Can I get your details?” … “Have you got a pen & paper”

“No I haven’t. Shall we pull up round the corner here and get one in the shop?”

Sounds like a sensible suggestion, after all we are still parked in the middle of the road. So I turn towards my car, thinking for a moment that he may double cross me and drive off, not minding too much if he does as our car is clearly fine and so are we, and snatching a view at half of his number plate as I do. I start the car and roll around the corner. Then watch first in the mirror and then through the back window as he drives off down the road. Two women instantly run over to me “I got a bit of his number”, “I think I saw some of it too”. As it turns out, one remembered that it was D-something-SHE (possibly 899?), the other just saw the SHE part… and I was 90% certain that it was D952(or 6?)SHE.

Bemused I called 999 and reported the whole incident. I was told to report to the local police station - trundled along there cautiously and took Lolly in to report what had happened. We spent far too long looking at a map (which Lolly wanted to grab) trying to work out what junction I’d been at. But although I knew precisely the geography of the area, somehow when it was on a map it wasn’t quite the same. So we gave up and went into the details.

Halfway through my story a thought dawned on the desk clerk. “Hang on… on my way into work just now, I saw 5 lads in a white car, the front looked a real mess. I thought it looked strange”. She had seen my 5 hit-and-run perps driving away from the scene.

Anyway, let’s see what happened. Apparently the car’s registered in a woman’s name, but I shouldn’t have thought the police’d have too much problem tracking the blokes down if they want to. Bloody stupid of them to drive off - I just wanted their details on the offchance, but there’s very little chance I’d ever have done anything with them. But now, because of the sheer rudeness of it as much as anything, I feel justified in reporting them to the police. So now the guy’s gonna get done for hit-and-run and dangerous driving as well as whatever insurance and road tax scam he was worried about revealing.

C’est la vie-less.

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