Contrary Mary and my scooter

The diners at the other tables had watched this happening and we all let out a very loud collective shout. What we shouted wasn’t, “Hang on a second, I think you have just bumped into the scooter old bean!” 

Nor was it:  “Pray desist, Sir”, which was what my father had said in 1952 one morning at breakfast during our summer holidays in deepest Devon to the man who’d come up to our table to say, “You bloody Jews. Why can’t you keep your children quiet?” (I’ve always admired my father’s calm reply. “Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength”, he once told me many years later.) 

I went over to my scooter and Erik the Albanian waiter helped me to pick it up.

“What was your husband doing, telling you to keep going back?” I asked the middle aged woman driver who’d got out of the car.

“Husband? What husband?” she asked.

“The man who was guiding you into the space”. I looked round; the short middle aged man in short shorts had disappeared. 

“I’ve never seen that man before in my  life”, she said. 

“He just stopped to help as I was trying to park.”

“He was a drunk who was just passing by,” said Erik the waiter. “He’s a local drunk. He’s always waving people trying to park into too small parking spaces until they hit the car behind. He’s famous round here for it.”

“My name’s Mary,” the driver said. “Look, I’m  terribly sorry but he just kept waving me  back. ‘You’re fine, just keep on backing up’, he kept saying.”

“Mary, clearly there are people out there who spend their lives backing people like you into the car behind or in this case my Vespa. But there’s absolutely no way you could have parked in that space — it’s half the size of your car — assisted by a  drunken looney or not.”

We exchanged contact details and I sat down again. The woman at the next table said: “I can’t believe how polite you were to her.”

“Oh well, it’s just a scooter. Nobody got killed,” I said.

The next morning I emailed Mary.

‘Dear Mary, You could have killed me! It’s a miracle I wasn’t sitting on it!!!’ I said I’d get my garage to quote for the repairs.

She replied saying: ‘I’m extremely sorry I hit your scooter but I cannot possibly have damaged both sides, as a forensic analysis of the damage will prove and I have photographic evidence and a witness to say you never mentioned the damage at the time. It must be old damage.’ 

She offered me £50.

‘Forensic analysis’?  Am I in the middle of an episode of CSI!? This is NW London not Las Vegas. Don’t tell me, this lady is a Scotland Yard crime scene investigator. 

I replied: ‘Dear Mary, Re your offer of £50 — which was about the cost of my dinner last night — I assume this is a joke.

‘It’s really very simple. So simple that I think a child of five could comprehend it. If a car hits a scooter on one side with enough force to knock it over onto its other side then clearly you damage both sides.

'I didn’t want to get into an argument with you or your drunk husband or friend who turned out to be neither your husband nor a friend but a drunk who thinks it’s funny to back strangers cars into other cars, or in this case my scooter. 

‘It was only later when I looked at the scooter that I realised there was quite a bit of damage on both sides. I suggest to close this matter satisfactorily and amicably an offer to donate £1,000,000 to a charity I support would be a nice gesture on your part and far less than any garage repair bill and insurance claim.

Mary kindly accepted my offer by return email.

Note: After filing this column the editor texted me: ‘Think you mean £100...not £1 million, unless you’re driving a solid gold Vespa’.