*Snippets*

Out of the frying pan

My office car park comes off a laneway backing onto people's garages, you know the type - where, from the street it looks like no one who lives there owns a car - aha but they do, hidden in a secret laneway behind the houses. Yes well, all secrets aside, this particular laneway is the access to our car park and this morning whilst turning slowly into said laneway, attempting to drive as slow as possible to stick to the 8 km/h speed limit (I swear 8 km/h is drivably impossible!) a little old Japanese lady wanders out of her garage looking in the opposite direction, completely unaware of the crunching of gravel under my tires, and that even at 10 km/h a little green Getz is about to hit her. However, as if a little old Japanese lady with a car park death wish wasn't strange enough for my morning, she was carrying with her, of all things, a frying pan into our staff car park. Realising she's not going to stop on her mission to cross the road, I slam on my breaks and she finally turns and sees me. Less than a foot away from my car, she gives me the sweetest 'oops' smile I've ever seen, to which I start miming my apology to her through the windscreen (because of course I was in the wrong - why do we always do that, apologise even when it's not our fault - politeness?). She signals for me to go past and I wave as I continue my endeavour to find a car space, free to go on living my life knowing tomorrow's headlines won't read 'heartless bitch runs down innocent Japanese frypan-carrying woman in car park'. But I'm still intrigued by the frying pan. So I watch her in my rear-view mirror as she continues across the laneway and into the car park, finds a small patch of dirt and fallen leaves next to a brick dividing wall and proceeds to tip out the remnants of this morning's tasty Japanese breakfast onto the patch. She then nonchalantly wanders on back to her pretty house off the laneway, free to live her life making many a tasty breakfast and wandering through car parks with kitchen items. I can't believe I've worked there for 3 years and was never aware our parking lot doubled as a pig trough. Might have to start bringing in my frying pans!