Talking about the car wash...

Car washes are strange places. For a few minutes you are totally alone with your imagination as the washer jets spray a seductive film of soapy liquid around and over your vessel. Your mind seems to float as the sound of the splashing water hypnotises and you are set adrift on memory bliss…

Down, down, down – and as the light dims, filtering down through the water above, you begin to move towards another place. You should be in a petrol station car wash at a supermarket in Scarborough, but instead you’re in a in a submarine caught inside a cave underneath the ocean - and you are someone else. Dive! Dive! Dive! The claxon repeatedly sounds as the hunt for Red October begins.

You’re in a submarine deep beneath the sea, twenty thousand leagues under the sea, Captain Nemo, commander of the Nautilus. Now you’re Troy Tempest, puppet captain of the Stingray and the fish people, armed with spear guns, are quickly closing in on you. Deeper, and you’re Lloyd Bridges at the wheel of the Argonaut, the ‘Sea Hunt’ on as you carefully edge your way past that ledge of rock that looks as though it must fall at any moment.

And what’s that sound? Thousands of tentacles, as noisy as your sub’s engine, surround you, slapping you with thousands of seaweed-like fronds as they lash you repeatedly, trying to break into the safety of your diving capsule.

A sea centipede with hundreds of leathery legs tries pulling apart your one man submarine, intent on catching you for supper. You struggle but it’s no use. It has you! You are going under!

“I’ll go down with my ship!” And as quickly as the monster appeared it’s gone.

But now a raging storm whips up, the sound of the wind a fury, blowing the water fiercely away from your observation hatch. What now, an underwater volcano about to erupt? Then all is quiet as you come back, no longer adrift on memory bliss and you see dry land full ahead – the sanctuary of Morrison’s car park.

You are safe. The sea could not hold you, monsters didn’t eat you, the storm was weathered – and, washing cycle over, you start the engine. EXIT – the neon sign displays, and you do. That was a close one.

Next time I may wash my car by hand.