Friday 27 July 2012

Friday 27th July - The Hand Car Wash

If you regularly go to the hand car wash, you may be wondering what the fuss is about.

Well, yesterday afternoon was my first ever visit.

What an experience!

I usually get my car washed at the Sainsbury's car park. However the car was really, really filthy and I reckoned that more than a bucket of water and a soapy cloth would be required. Should I go and buy car shampoo, brushes, and whatever else is needed? The last time I washed a car by hand was thirty years ago, and the experience was so dispiriting that I never repeated it. I think the problem was that most of the brown on our little yellow Fiat 127 turned out to be rust, so the car looked much, much worse after my hard work than before.

Then I remembered the hand car wash place in the trading estate...

I thought that you drive up, park the car and stand to one side while they get on with it.

Nope. Just as I was about to open the window to ask where they wanted me to leave the car, two burly young men, looking armed and determined, opened fire with high pressure water lances which made a thunderous noise against the doors and windows. Then they beckoned me forward, whereupon four more men fell upon the car with huge, soapy, sheep-skin pads over their hands. Once the whole car was enveloped in a blizzard of white foam, the lancers reappeared.

Then I was directed to drive slowly through an arch and round into the next bay. Yet another man knocked on the window, which I cautiously opened. "Interior or just exterior?" "How much is the interior?" "Twelve pounds". That seemed too good to be true. I unlocked the boot and got out.

My little car was attacked from all sides - I counted eight people; two with industrial vacuum cleaners and the others with an assortment of cloths. The car was hoovered, dried, polished, dusted in minutes. It hasn't been that clean and shiny since the day I bought it!

From beginning to end, tentatively entering the compound to handing over my £12 and leaving, took a scant ten minutes.

What an experience!

 

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