Prang

After another beautiful day on Monday, Tuesday was foggy and gray. We drove out to Lunenburg, where the sun materialised and everything was beautiful and shiny.

To celebrate this turn in the weather, my wife drove the car into a telegraph pole, provoking a bestial roar from me as paint was scraped down the side of the vehicle, making the other occupants quake in fear. I'm usually quite placid and quiet, so to hear me roaring was rather out of character.

I leapt from the vehicle to look at the flank of our once shiny hire car, to see a huge brown scrape along it, apparently starting to grow hair where the pole had shed splinters. Still, nothing doing; I got back in the passenger seat and sulked for half an hour. My wife had bought me an ice-cream to cheer me up, but unfortunately that was ten minutes before our telegraph pole mishap, rather than after, so it didn't really ameliorate my feelings of rage and worry.

On the other hand, we have purchased the extra damage waiver for the vehicle, which at the time seemed terribly expensive, but now seems a jolly good purchase. Unless we get back to Halifax and they tell us it's void on Tuesdays in Nova Scotia, at which point I'll have a conniption.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before we managed to prang the car: it's a Dodge Charger, which to Americans is a medium sized car, but to a Brit is the Biggest Vehicle Ever Made, far wider and longer than anything I've driven before. With the exception of the van I moved house in, which had the advantage of being resistant to dents. Or rather, you just didn't care. Whereas the Charger is a long, low-slung behemoth that plays your ipod and goes very fast in a straight line, but is a little less forgiving when it comes to corners and other such complicated manouvres.

Still, it survived the drive to Shelburne this afternoon, when the heavens opened and Nova Scotia almost washed away in the torrent, and I slept all 200 km, which shows that these automatic cars are pretty good.

Ahem. The wife was allowed to continue driving after the telegraph pole incident, of course. As long as she doesn't try to do the other side to match.