Car insurance may take care of scratches, but it can’t repair embarrassment.
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by: Sarah Maple
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Word Count: 735
Something that everyone should know is that you should never EVER ever ever attempt to turn your car around on the beach. No matter what you have seen in the movies or on TV, no matter how firm the sand looks, no matter if the sand is covered up under stones and seaweed. The inviting but evil sand will always trap you!
I knew this, my sister knew this, my sister’s boyfriend, my boyfriend and my mum also knew this. That is why, as we stood watching my dad after he had volunteered to turn the family car around outside the bar, we all gasped and ran towards him with our arms flailing.
“Noooo nooo.” We shouted as we realised he had given up trying to turn the car in the tight gravely space and was heading towards the gate that led to the beach.
We had just finished drinking in a little bar by the sea on Porthtowan beach in Cornwall. The bar has a lovely line of huge window seats that are always full of people having a drink or enjoying a meal. They are highly coveted seats that people will stand around and wait f or; sitting as close as decently possible to occupied booths and watching out of the corner of their eye until it looks like someone could possibly be going. When it becomes clear that the people who had been occupying the coveted booth are going, it becomes a free for all as the watching customers launch themselves towards the prized seats in a bid to capture them for the next hour. Sometimes the huge seats are taken by one piffly little couple kissing and cuddling which can be extremely annoying when you have a crowd of ten who are perched round a two man table two feet away. But everyone is all very polite, until the couple start picking their coats up when they will inevitably almost get trampled in the ensuing scrum.
The booths had another reason to be smug this evening because they were just about to get a free show courtesy of us.
Dad rolled closer and closer the beach and we ran faster and faster towards him. Alas we were too late; the front wheels of my mums BMW convertible hit the sand and rolled off towards the night. Dad was aiming for a big U turn but he had misjudged the sinking properties of Porthtowan beach and was attempting to swing the poor car round next to a conspicuous looking sand pile. The five of us stopped at the gate and gasped in unison. The car came to a slow stop and the tires began to rev, throwing wheels of sand into the air and on to the soft bonnet.
Kind volunteers from the window seats who had been watching the scene unfold with great amusement ran out to try and help us push out the car whilst I tried to dig up the immersed tires with a child’s bucket and spade that I had found by a rock. The beach wasn’t giving up our car that easily though and the more we dug the lower the car sunk.
In the end we had to leave the car and get a couple of taxis home.
We came back early the next day in the hope that the lifeguards could tow it out with their sand Land Rover. When we got back in the daylight however, we discovered that there was huge surf competition happening that day and that lots and lots of people were arriving on the beach to watch. Bear in mind that our car was stuck right in front of one of only two entrances to the beach it made for a rather embarrassing escapade. Not that I don’t appreciate a good giggle it’s just that when hundreds of people are pointing and laughing at you, the joke becomes a little less amusing.
At least I can look back and chuckle at the memory and impart my pearls of wisdom to save other people from the same embarrassment that we suffered that day at the beach. The sand scratches on the BM were taken care of by the car insurance company and as for Dad…He certainly wont be making any more sandy excursions any time soon.
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