hot dogs die in cars

It smells like something has crawled into my car and died. Usually when I get a whiff of something like this I find a half-empty toddler-cup tucked neatly behind Snicket’s booster seat . Where there was once milk there’s now a cure for bird-flu growing nicely. Otherwise there’ll be a discarded sausage sandwich or half a burger shoved unceremoniously under the passenger seat and left to fester alongside a free Buzz Lightyear following a MacDonalds drive-by . This time… nothing.

What is that smell? I’ve cleared out everything, right down to the car park tickets and chewing gum wrappers. Everything’s gone. Except the smell. I notice that Alley has left her Jamie Cullum CD in the glove compartment and, believe me, it really stinks… but even that isn’t this bad.

I’m getting paranoid now, particularly as I have to give someone a lift from one office to another later today. What will they think? What will they say? Probably something along the lines of ‘I can cope with the smell, but you can throw that bloody CD out of the window straight away’.

I once worked with a bloke who had no sense of smell. Each Wednesday he’d leave work early to go and play five-aside with his mates. After each match he’d buy a pint of milk to drink in the car on the way home. He’d sling his kit into the back seat and off he’d go. This particular week, he’d bought his milk and was getting into his car and about to open the carton when someone suggested going for a beer instead. So he put the carton on the floor of the car behind his seat. And forgot about it. For three weeks.

Eventually, he offered to give someone a lift home from work. They did have a sense of smell unfortunately, meaning that, not only did he have to clean up the remains of an exploded carton of three week old milk, he had to clear up his colleague’s sick from the passenger seat. And the floor. And the dashboard.

After a while he was forced to sell the car for scrap, but not before he’d been caught short one night and, in need of a ‘number two’ pulled up outside his mother’s house. Finding the house locked and with no-one at home, he snuck round the back and squatted over a carrier bag which he had in the car. Once he’d finished he put the bag back into the car with the intention of flushing it at home.

I don’t need to tell you that he forgot about it… Not only did he have no sense of smell, he had no sense at all.