He's gone ...

... and I nearly didn't get a chance to say goodbye. I have to say that I've been spending much of my time unimpressed with the organisations who I've had to deal with over the Wedgie affair.

Insurance company: a serial non communication led to me finding out by accident - purely because I took it upon myself to call the garage he'd been taken to to be assessed - that he'd been declared a total loss and would be taken for salvage the next morning. I belted over to the garage to say my goodbyes (atmospherically in the pouring rain …) plus retrieve my tax disc, parking permit, map, stereo walkman and speakers - the latter 2 items I discovered to have been nicked ... Hey, it was cutting it fine and I was exceptionally cross with Direct Line for not keeping me up-to-date, but at least I did get to say goodbye.

The police: I still hadn't heard from anyone to tell me what had actually happened. Right at the beginning they’d said there had been a crash. OK - but I had questions: had there been another car involved, did anyone get hurt? I rang the number I had been given right at the beginning and asked to speak to my case officer. “Oh, looks like he's passed it to someone else in Croydon, I'll put you through”. 20 minutes on hold.

I finally managed to attract the attention of the operator who kept saying "sorry to keep you" approximately every 2 minutes and asked for the number that I was being put through to so I could try myself later. I tried on and off consistently from 0850 to 1530. I tried other Croydon station numbers who all pointed me back to that same number and said they were unable to give me any other method of contacting the officer working on my case. In the end I called the number I had rung first thing in the morning in the hope that they might be able to help. I was advised by an embarrssed sounding young officer that I had been given the wrong number (by 3 different people would you believe ...) by way of apology he offered to read me the report and promised to get my new case officer to ring with a full update.

The gist of it is: 3 men stole my car and were chased by a police vehicle. They tried to ram said police car and then ended up ploughing into a grassy bank. They then legged it and were chased on foot. 1 got away and 2 were caught; 1 of these was released with no charge and the other has been bailed to return on 3rd November. Apparently this was to allow time for more investigation and forensics work ... They'll have a job bearing in mind its already been taken for salvage! I pointed this out, at which point the officer said, well if he can’t keep track of his evidence then he’s going to lose his case isn’t he? My case I think you’ll find. As I say – I’m not impressed.

So, I await official settlement, grapple with the forms and leave you with a picture of Wedgie from the side where you'd almost think there was nothing wrong with him ...

The other side's not so good though and I can't bear to show you rest ...