University III

At university we averaged at least one party per week, sometimes two.  Most of us on the course could cook up a party meal for 30-50 out of supermarket scraps, one of my favourites was sweet and sour ham (actually ham hock) and of course as mature students and ex merchant navy officers we could afford to buy the booze.  Personally, I had an account at Victoria wine which they delivered every friday in a rather large box, rum martini and gin mostly with mixers, had'nt developed my taste for real ale then.  In fact during the 70's Red Barrel was the beer of choice, pretty disgusting stuff.  This was also an era where drink/drive was not socially unacceptable...except perhaps to my neighbour who lived in a flat above on the Whitchurch road!!
This poor unfortunate had just bought a new mini and parked it outside the side entrance to our flats.  The street was a dead end off the main Whitchurch road.  It was my usual practice to swing into this dead end in my, very old, A Series landy and assist the dreadful brakes by bumping my chassis into the cement post holding up the wire fence at the dead end.  Over my stay the cement post had collapsed slightly but was still serviceable as an auxiliary braking system.  Getting to the chase, I came home this night, after the midnight hour, well oiled and slow to react.  Turned into the unlit dead end cul de sac and drove into my usual parking space.  The landy behaved as usual and came to a stop.  It was only when I got out that I realized we were not in our usual spot.  Further examination revealed a lovely new Mini car, now about half its original size neatly buried on my cement post 'brake'.   Backed off and parked up a bit.  Not a scratch on landy.  Found a bit of paper and left my name and address on windscreen.
Next morning woken up by bell, opened door to an assault, verbal and fisticuff's from my neighbour.  Despite my plea that I had insurance he continued to try and batter me until he ran out of puff.  After the first punch I had woken up so blocked most of the rest of his onslaught as it was rage more than clinical harm he was throwing at me.  Finally got him settled enough to give him my insurance but the poor chap still left uttering threats and bad language.  People do take their cars very personally I have found over the intervening years, something I regard with some bemusement.