Omg! I Nearly Made A Complete Fool Of Myself

I nearly drove into the gates at work, yesterday morning. Jasus! I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Ha ha. Daydreaming? Would I say that I was daydreaming? What choice do I have, but to admit that I was daydreaming? It is what I do best, after all. 

Could you imagine, the new guy crashing through the front gates? Make an impression, they say. Get noticed, they say. Oh fuck!

I was zipping down the main road outside work. Although the roads weren’t especially busy, there were cars right behind me. There are two sets of gates, as there are two driveways next to each other, as there are two properties, with cyclone wire fences, evidence of our previous, glorious manufacturing past, before conservative Liberal Govts sold everything and allowed everything else to be moved offshore. In the morning, both sets of gates have always been open and in the open position they are barely recognisable as two sets of gates at all.


I usually go through the second set of gates to the car park. I think I was singing Angie, with Mick as we approached the driveway. It wasn’t until I had my left hand front wheel, literally, on the driveway – all that cyclone wire just tends to merge into one image – that I realised the second set of gates was, in fact, closed. I’d never seen them closed before. I hit the brakes and came to a sudden stop, I can tell you. (Insert skid sound) The cars behind me all stopped. They didn’t really have to, as I released the brake peddle enough and moved far enough forward to be on the driveway and off the road completely. But there was a P-plate driver directly behind me who panicked, I guess at how sudden it all was, who stopped and remained stationary, as if to draw greater attention to my stupidity, like some little snitch. 

“Move alone, move along, there is nothing to see here.” 

I managed to back across the double driveway to the open set of gates and skulked out of sight, as the line of traffic behind the P-plater got steadily longer. It wasn’t until I had done that that the P-plater moved off cautiously, eyeballing me with his fear and ineptitude as he went. I almost expected him to bring his finger’s to his eyes and then point them at me. 

I wanted to call out, “Shoo! Shoo! Off you go! Get some driving experience and then you can judge me,” but I didn’t, of course.