Put It Away!

Some years back, in a previous home in North London, I lived down the road from a Greek family, the son of which owned a BMW.

You knew that he owned a BMW because he spent most evenings cleaning and polishing it, or carrying out "essential maintenance". It was always parked conspicuously, yet unwisely, directly outside of his parents' house, despite its vulnerability to insane speed that other motorists would exhibit in careering blindly over the adjacent railway bridge.

And just in case anyone missed the point that this young lad owned a BMW, he would spend the rest of his time sitting on the wall outside of his house with his mates, talking about the BMW that he owned, the one that was just there in front of them.

I was given the impression that, to this young man there was little point in owning a BMW if no-one knew about the fact.

(I assume this is why young men now wear their Calvin Klein underpants on the outside. There is no point in paying the premium for underpants if no-one apart from your mum knows about it).

I mention this because purely to remark about an incident in my street this morning.

It's a quiet street with a settled older community, where families have lived there long enough to have raised children and seen them leave.

This is not true though in one particular household, where the son, a man in his forties, still lives at home with his elderly mother. However, this man may still be living with his mother, but he owns a Jaguar. Yes a Jaguar. It's raven black and has a soft-top.

This is a rather outstanding car for our street, as it's probably the only vehicle without a dent in it!

Anyway, despite his age, this chap feels compelled to manifest all the same compulsions of my earlier neighbour, particularly when it comes to the carwash preoccupation. Again, one assumes that this vehicle, rather than a successful career, or a lasting child-rearing marriage, represents the apogee of his life-achievement.

Whatever; I'm past caring since this morning's "display" when I witnessed a step too far. I had set out for work and was just getting into my stride when, on passing the said Jaguar car, I saw the owner emerge from his mother's house dress only in a towel. Yes, a towel, draped around his waste, partly obscured by the pendulous beergut that rested upon it. He didn't even have slippers, it was like he stepped out of the bath, barely covered his modesty and then just walked out into the street, like he was living in Liverpool or something.

He then padded over to his Jaguar, opened the boot (trunk), removed a suit and a white shirt, shut the boot and padded back into the house.

a) He was practically naked.

b) He is using a shiny Jaguar as a wardrobe.

c) He lives in my street.

We're having enough trouble with maintaining our inflated house prices as it is with the recession, without this white-trash floor-show turning up on Google Street View!

I feel cheapened and unclean.