It usually happens within minutes – sometimes even seconds – of the final sweep of the chamois or polishing cloth.
Over a couple of hours each crease and curve of the bodywork has been lovingly caressed, buffed to gleaming beauty, automotive pride and joy restored in the glinting sun. Then it arrives.
The gift from above which is not so much the icing on the cake but rather the dollop of seagull doo doo; that substance with a seemingly magnetic attraction towards a newly-cleaned vehicle and, left to harden, a tungsten-tough finish.
If you’re really unlucky you may even fall victim to the regular sight on the streets outside our Arbroath office – the car which hasn’t so much been the victim of a passing plop of random poop, but the target for avian carpet bombing of such devastating effectiveness that it’s difficult to determine the vehicle’s actual colour.
Across Angus of late, however, motorists have been coming out to something else on their windscreen that may have also have triggered anything from a deep sigh to a string of sweary words.
Decriminalised parking has been brought back to the county’s busy streets and with it wardens who, in the last couple of weeks, have slapped a whopping eleven grand’s worth of tickets on illegally parked motors.
Or it would have been eleven grand had it not been for Angus Council’s softly-softly, compassionate introduction of the scheme, which has meant that the little black and yellow packets have actually contained dummy tickets warning offenders that the new rules are about to come properly into force.
The period of grace comes to an end this week and hopefully the 200 or so drivers who have had a lucky escape from a £60 penalty will have learned their lesson.
We’re incredibly fortunate in Angus not to have to pay for on street or public car parking, but the gratitude shown over the years meant that drivers who were given an inch decided to take several extra miles and town centres became a free for all.
Council chiefs say early reaction to the reintroduction of enforcement has been positive and I think they’re on the right road with this one.
If there was just a way of getting those guano-laden gulls to only home in on people parked where they shouldn’t be….
