(Ooh Just Like the Movies) Quick! ...."Follow THAT Car!"

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

One of our Brother’s in Law bought a little sail yacht at the beginning of  2012.

For various reasons, by late September we still hadn’t gotten around to seeing it yet and since Himself and the kids have never been in a sailing boat before we organised an impromptu sailing trip together.

So… on what the weather man promises to be one of the last warm days of the summer (the word “warm” being rather relative on this occasion because 2012 was the “summer that wasn’t”) we head out to the In-Law’s home in Delft.

After sorting out kids and gear inside their house BiL warns Himself that the boat is moored at a place that’s a little tricky to get to.

Once we arrive we will have to leave the car and take a ferry boat to another area but the  car parking spot we are heading for is in a paddock off a lane off a side road off a side road, and there is no real address to give to Our Lady of the Tom Tom, so it would be best if we just follow his grey Volvo.

We are just herding the kids back into our car out the front of their house when, Himself exclaims in Dutch:  ”That was quick! … come on kids we are away!” and he leaves them rushing to get their seat belts on as he quickly pulls out after the grey Volvo.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

We weave our way around Delft… fine… then Himself remarks “Look! BiL has to Tank” (pulling into petrol station) so we follow him into the petrol station.

We want to go past them and wait for them at the exit because we don’t need fuel, so the kids prepare to wave at BiL and his kids in the other car as we go past… suddenly shocked little voices from the back seat “Papa, that’s not (name) BiL  in that car!“

Turns out we are following a grey Volvo… just not the right grey Volvo!

Yes, some poor guy in a grey Volvo is probably wondering why three kids (Kiwi Daughter has a friend along for the day) were grinning and waving madly at him and why the smiles simultaneously changed to shock and disbelief when they suddenly saw his face up close.

Himself is stunned and the rest of us are killing ourselves laughing.

We pull over Himself phones BiL and asks  ”Where the heck are you?” to which BiL replies” Well, I‘m at home looking at your empty car parking space wondering where the heck you got to! “(BiL didn’t have our mobile phone number).

Himself explains his mistake to a background noise of giggles and tells him the name of the petrol station we are at and BiL comes and laughingly picks us up some ten minutes later. He winds down his window when he pulls up along side us and jokes “Hey! Himself… do you want to follow me now or have you spied another grey Volvo you’d rather tail?“

What are the chances of there being two dark grey Volvo’s of the same model travelling down the same fairly quiet Delft street on a Sunday morning?  ….All too high it seems!

We counted our lucky stars that the previous guy stopped when he did and that hopefully he  hadn’t been intending to drive to Paris!We did later wonder (if he hadn’t stopped) how long we would have gone before we twigged that we weren’t following the right car? (hmpf… it never goes wrong like this in the movies!)

Himself isn’t going to live this down down for a while… and the moral of the story: if you are going to play at  ”follow that car”  it might be handy to memorise the number plate to make certain you have the right one !