Why washing my car is like gambling with Karma

On this cold and rainy and windy Monday morning, I reflect on Karma and her evilly concocted plans to make me stay in bed. After five months in my host country, I finally pluck up enough courage to have my car washed. Now, you may think that this is easy, in South Africa you go to the garage, they wash it, you pay, you leave, or you get Solly to do it. Here, it’s not so easy. Let me explain why:

1.    My wonderful husband (God bless him) always offers to wash my car. Again, we must reflect on my terminology book, such phrases like “Don’t worry, I will wash your car this weekend and I understand your car is dirty because we do all our road trips in your car and the dogs are in your car all the time”, means “You will have to take the car to a car wash. I, who have had Spanish classes, will not go with you. Such a promise after five months is all it is, a promise. Learn the Spanish.”

2.    The practicality of washing your own car only becomes a reality nightmare when you realise you may need a 100 meter long hose pipe to fit from the closest tap to the outside of your house, to your car. This entails shopping and trying to explain what you need to an extremely helpful Spanish sales assistant (note the sarcasm), and to try not to get yourself arrested because somewhere along the line you will place the emphasis on the wrong syllable of the word and probably end up making a sexually explicit proposition to the Spaniard. So we have a problem. And to this day we cannot locate long enough hose pipes. We are too scared to ask, I admit. Maybe it’s hidden with all the other things we want to buy but cannot find, like Mrs Balls Chutney. 

3.    So scratch that idea. 

4.    And I might add no-one in your street washes their own cars but miraculously their cars are bright and clean every week whilst your car looks like the dusty stepsister. 

5.    So the next option: go to a car wash. This entails some carefully thought out questions, that you need to either memorise or pray that you can keep the conversation to a minimum. So on Saturday (possibly due to lack of sleep), I decide today is the day. I shall conquer my fear. I have two degrees, I am clearly not a complete fool and as such, should be able to have my car washed and restored to its bright and shiny condition that it was five months ago.  

Well, I arrive, smile like an idiot (again) and pray that I can get this done. So I start in my best (limited) Spanish, and with some extreme hand gestures (the question was if the car must be cleaned inside and outside, so we both gesture like mad and eventually I have to knock on the outside of the car and point to the inside) – and yes, I do look like a flying monkey some days with the hand gestures – I go off to a blissful shopping spree at the Chinaman’s shop (a topic for another day) and return to a shiny sparkly new car. 

Of course I am at this stage also thinking, I am so happy that there were so few cars at the car wash, it was so quick. Must be the Spanish thing of only waking up at 12, whilst I am the early bird catching the worm (the saying sound wrong if I say catches the wash?).

And so, today, I reflect on the amount of preparation this one hour event took, why it was so hard do in the first place and want to throw my coffee cup at dear old Karma, because it is raining buckets and the new shiny car looks like a heap of washing forgotten outside. I think all the Spaniards probably knew this, that’s why the car wash was empty, and they are laughing madly into their coffee cups at the South African’s inability to listen and understand the Spanish news and Spanish weather. Or maybe I should invest in a gypsy crystal ball. Thanks Karma!