Truly, I am accursed.

In the police station this morning YET AGAIN, not in relation to the Great Laptop Drama this time, but thanks to a bizarre accident yesterday afternoon. I had intended to go out, but on reaching the communal parking lot it was clear that I was going nowhere. My car (along with my neighbour's car) was trapped in its parking bay by a mystery vehicle which had been parked behind me, a little uphill but leaving no room for maneouvre.

I looked about ineffectually for the owner, at which point my next-door neighbour walked by and informed me the car had already been there for an hour or two. I then called the guardhouse to request a wheel-clamp (warning notices abound on the consequences of illegal parking around here).

The guard promptly arrived, and he seemed to be well acquainted with the owner of the offending Toyota, for he ducked into a nearby house and emerged carrying a car key. As he started up the car, I went into the house to give the owner (a woman) a piece of my mind about her inconsiderate parking habits.  Meanwhile, by the grinding and stalling noises in the background, it sounded as though the security guard was having trouble with the concept of gears.

I dashed over to my neighbour's place to let him know that the culprit had been discovered, and it was from this vantage point that we watched as the security guard rolled the Toyota straight down the hill and smack into the back of my car.

Well, hell hath no fury like someone whose precious jam jar has been bashed thanks to a lazy bitch who can't be bothered walk the extra steps from her actual parking space to her front door, or move her own car a few meters when required. Furthermore, she tried to insist that as hers was a company car, I should not try to involve her insurers as this would reflect badly on her. I should recover the money from the security guard instead. Yeah, right.

I have discovered this article revealing the identity of the only person in world history unluckier than me:

Unluckier than me. Just.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi:
 In 1945 he was on a business trip to Hiroshima when an American atomic bomb detonated above the city, killing 80,000 people in an instant (and many more from the effects of radiation later). He was knocked to the ground and suffered serious burns, and spent a terrible night in an air raid shelter among thousands of his screaming, dying, mutilated compatriots. 

In the morning he negotiated his way through the ruined streets and caught a train back to his home — the city of Nagasaki. Heavily bandaged, he reported to work a day later, and was just relaying the terrible events of Hiroshima to colleagues when he witnessed once more the terrible flash of an exploding atomic bomb. Again, he survived, but being present in the only two cities ever to be attacked with atomic weapons must make Tsutomu Yamaguchi the unluckiest survivor of all.