Where's the police when you need them eh?

Had a nice afternoon at a friend’s house, ate cake, drank tea, and then drove home. Somewhere I had to stop behind a parked car to let some oncoming cars pass and when I stopped I heard BUMP! and felt the car shaking a little. A guy on a moped hadn’t stopped in time and had hit the rear bumper of my car. He stopped, so I got out of the car, checked the damage done and walked towards him. “Sorry”, he said. “Hmm”, I said. He even took off his helmet. The bumper had lost a lot of its shiny black appearance and was all covered in scratches. “Can I see your moped license, so I can see who you are?”, I whispered (lost my voice last Monday and haven’t found it yet). And at that point the boy, he must have been about 16, either thought: “oh shit, I’m in big trouble, it’s going to cost me money”, or “fuck! I don’t have a license”. Either way, he took off. I quickly made a mental note of the number on the license plate of his moped and grabbed my iPod (I do love my new iPod), opened the dictaphone and whispered the number before I forgot. Couldn’t think of another way to make a quick note and fortunately it worked.

And then I got in my car and drove home. My legs were actually shaking. Gawd, I didn’t know I was the kind of person to get shaking legs from a minor incident like this. Perhaps it was pure anger because the boy took off. I don’t know.

At home hubs phoned our friendly insurance guy (I don’t have a voice remember, so I couldn’t phone him myself) and told him about the accident and gave him the license plate number. “You will have to lodge a complaint with the police”, he said.

Now, while hubs was phoning the friendly insurance guy, I was already on the internet to lodge that complaint. I had read that in many cases this was a possibility. So I searched for ‘police, lodge a complaint’ and arrived on a form to do so.

‘Where did the incident take place’, was the first question. That wasn’t a difficult one and I answered it correctly.

The internet police warned that I couldn’t lodge a complaint about everything via the internet and listed the options for which the police actually needed to be contacted by telephone. I checked the list and one of the options was: (you can’t lodge a complaint via the internet if) you know the identity of the offender. All the other options weren’t applicable in this case either, so I went on to fill in the list of questions.

‘Of what would you like to lodge a complaint?’, the police wanted to know and listed a couple of possibilities, one of them being: destruction or damage through a collision.
“Yep, that’s it”, I thought and chose that one.

‘What has been damaged?’, the internet police asked next and again gave a list of possibilities.
I chose ‘vehicle or vessel’.

‘Did anyone get hurt or was violence involved?’
I chose ‘no’.

‘Has the offender been seen or, if applicable, is the license plate known?’
’Yes’ seemed to be the obvious choice here.

In that case you can’t lodge a complaint via the internet flickering red letters told me. You have to contact the police through this phone number……..

Man! Why didn’t they mention that before?

So hubs took it upon himself to phone the police, since I feared they wouldn’t take a whispering, heavy breather (it takes a lot of energy to produce a voice and even though I’m screaming, only a whisper comes out) seriously.  And besides, I shouldn’t speak at all. Very bad for the vocal cords people keep telling me. *sigh*

After he answered the same questions I had already answered on the internet, completely in vain, and gave the license plate number of the stupid boy to the police person, she told him that we had to come to the police station to actually lodge the complaint. ‘I will make an appointment for you for Monday morning, 08.00 o’clock’, she said.

It is Thursday today. Thursday! What do you mean; Monday morning is the first opportunity to lodge a complaint! Is our local police force enjoying a long weekend off work? Even more worrying, apparently the local police station is always closed on Saturday and Sunday. Always!
Is there no crime in weekends? Do criminals only work from Monday to Friday, nine to five? Do stupid boys not drive their (or other people’s, I don’t know) mopeds into innocent cars in weekends?

But no, Monday morning, 08.00 o’clock they will make the time to put my complaint into their computer and I’m pretty sure they will not do anything else with it. But our insurance company will probably ask for evidence that I’ve been to the police, so…

Meanwhile, our friendly insurance guy already called us to say that they did track down the license plate number and it is a registered plate. So stupid guy will be found, I’m betting on the insurance company to be the first one to find him, and either stupid boy or his insurance company will pay for the damage. I hope.  But I’m definitely not betting on the police to do something useful. They will probably need some time to recover from their funfilled long weekend off work first.

Aaaaanyway, I’m just glad no one was harmed in this incident. And I’m glad that stupid boy stopped to say sorry, even though I’m really upset that he took off at great speed after that. I tried to grab his sweater, but  then again I’m glad I didn’t pull him off his moped. He probably would have hit his head on the curb and I would have been sued for inflicting injuries on an innocent stupid boy.

I feel slightly frustrated.

Moos thinks he's one of the dogs

Walking in a straight line is pretty difficult when Moos is around...




(Perseverance and Patience make Progress!)

What’s one week between friends

Last time we ‘spoke’ I told you that I’d be back ‘next week’. Well, you didn’t know one Dutch week is about 4 or 5 weeks long, did you? (Seriously? It isn’t. But time does fly.)

Aaaaanyway. I’m back now.

Hubs is doing really well. Apart from a decline in his fitness and stamina, but it would be a miracle if he wouldn’t feel the effects of a four hour long operation.

And finally the builders have left the building. This afternoon the last ones went their merry way and now we can start painting what needs to be painted. Of course things didn’t go as smoothly as all of us would have liked, but hubs and I weren’t surprised about that. No building work ever goes the way it’s supposed to go. At least not in our house. In fact, almost everything needed to be redone, but the end result is pretty good.

To celebrate all these happy facts, hubs bought a new computer, an Apple, for himself and a iPod for me. For I have been mentioning that perhaps I could probably love to have ‘one of those things that plays music’ to listen to when I’m horse riding. You see… Naloma isn’t the most relaxed horse on earth, but sometimes me singing POMPEDEPOMPEDEPOMPEDEPOMPOMPOM while riding helps to calm her down. And it relaxes me too. But my repertoire of ‘songs from the top of my head’ doesn’t go much further than POMPEDEDOM and that isn’t even a real song. So to prevent Naloma and me from getting bored, I thought perhaps one of those funky gadgets could be helpful. Just to give you an idea of how technically advanced I am; I know how to send a text message. 

So hubs bought me an iPod, which was more than I wanted really. But hey, I don’t like to look a gift horse in the mouth. This iThing opens up an amazing world for a digi-idiot like me. Before I had figured out how to get music on the iThing… it took me hours. And finally I know what apps are. Hooray! I’ve heard people talk about them, but never figured out what exactly they were going on about. Now I’ve downloaded the app Shazam (I’m honestly giggling while loosely mentioning ‘downloading’ and ‘apps’, for a week ago I didn’t even know what an iPod was. Oh I feel so young again.), because I really wanted to know the name of a particular song that I kept hearing on the radio while mucking out the stables, but I had never heard the name of the song and of the artist. Shazam really works! It’s amazing. The next day I heard the song on the radio, opened Shazam, held the iThing in front of the radio and within seconds it told me it was Benny Benassi with Cinema. Amazing! And do you know how addictive playing ‘Angry Birds’ is?
Now the only thing I have to figure out is how to get videos I’ve made with the iThing onto my blog, for I’m pretty sure you’ll like them. Patience and perseverance. And one day perhaps you’ll be able to see moving images of the fourleggers who frequently feature in my blog.

Now, what more can I tell you… Oh, hubs asked the surgeon if he could see the stapler that was used to staple his intestines together, and lo and behold, the surgeon didn’t only show both (!) staplers, but hubs also got to take them home. Since they can’t guarantee that these instruments will be clean enough to reuse, they normally get thrown away. Now these, not clean enough to be reused (!!), staplers, frequently get displayed on our dining table (!!!) to explain to visiting friends and family what went up hubs’ bum and on inside him during the operation. He even found out that he can order new staples on the internet and watched videos of how to perform the operation. And even though these videos came with the warning ‘these are NOT instruction videos’, I will not be surprised if one day I find an innocent victim, bum up on the dining table and hubs and some of his friends who were particularly interested in the working of these instruments, busy stapling some intestines together *shuddering*. Any idiot can open a private clinic.

And of course lots of interesting things happened during that ONE week that I wasn’t here, but I can’t remember what. I’m sure my memory will return. No, not sure, but hopeful.

Will be visiting y’all soon to see how you’re doing.