Tales from the Desert

Inappropriate footwear

The moral of this story would be to ignore
your mother's advice about wearing
clean underwear without any holes in them,
and to wear sensible and dignified
footwear instead.

Case in point.
I was almost involved in an accident this morning.
To be more precise. A mini-van ran me off the road,
and an undisclosed number of traffic cones were
obliterated in the incident, and will now not be
featuring as party hats during Halloween this year.

I was driving along a flyover that joins up with
the mother of all highways, Sheikh Zayed road.
Since the flyover is still under construction,
only two lanes are open to traffic and the rest
are cordoned off with thosefluorescent orange
traffic cones. I was driving in the slow lane,
singing along to the radio. There was a white
mini-van in the fast lane to the left of me.
As we rounded the bend, he decided that
perhaps he would be more suited to the
slow lane. The only problem being, that I
was where he wanted to be.

So he cut into my lane and ran me off
the road. I had to brake quite sharply
to avoid crashing into him and ploughed
into the traffic cones instead.

It all happened so quickly that I was unable
to take down his numberplate or even hoot
at him. So he drove off, and I pulled off to
the side of the road to regain my composure
which was hightailing it after the mini-van
at this point.

I was mad as a bat. Yelling and hooting
(as if that would help NOW), and then
proceeded to get out of my car to check
if there was any damage.

My choice of footwear this morning was
3-inch wedge shoes. Very Barbie-esque,
and very unlike me.

So form a mental picture of me stomping
in very un-Barbie-like fashion around the
back of the car to check the front fender,
only to realise that I had not engaged the
handbrake, and the car was now rolling
forward at quite an alarming rate.

So I'm tottering back as fast as my
wedge-encased feet can carry me to
the driver's seat, to pull up the handbrake,
and possibly avoid a further catastrophe.

This is of course all witnessed by a handful
of road workers on either side of the flyover,
thinking that Christmas or Eid has come early.
Oh, and of couse, all the while I'm still
yelling expletives at the mini-van which
is now long gone and speeding quite happily
along Sheikh Zayed road.

I'm glad to report that the hour of reflective
yoga in the morning is really starting to pay off.