Jonny McCambridge: Cold weather means a trip to the car wash…with giant turtles and whales

My conclusion is that it is futile attempting to keep a motor clean – so I don’t bother. My wife, regretfully, takes a different view. I’ve been driving her car recently due to mine being off the road after a failed MOT (alas). She gently encourages me to compensate for the use by keeping the petrol tank topped up and the bodywork clean. My impeccable argument that it is silly to waste money washing a car which will be as dirty as ever within 24 hours is ignored.

I’m on my way home from a shopping trip when I receive a message from my wife asking me to get the car washed.

I grumble under my breath as I examine the options. There is the drive through wash at my local garage. The advantage of this is that I can go through it without having to engage in conversation.

The stronger disadvantage is that it seems to have been out of order for the past seven years. Every time I go to it, there is a traffic cone blocking the lane. Once I asked the man who occupies the kiosk when it would be open again, but he doubted the technology exists to fix it.

Another option is the manned car wash at the bottom of my road. However, then I will have to exchange small-talk about the weather with the man with tattoos who collects the money. I always feel that a little part of me has died after every such encounter.

Even worse, one of the washers is elderly. I feel lousy sitting there while a senior citizen rinses suds off the windscreen. It seems that natural order of things that I should be cleaning his car.

On a purely theoretical level there is a third option. I could wash the car myself. Much like building a moving stairway to the moon, this remains unexplored territory.

Such weighty concerns are rolling through my mind as I drive out of the shopping complex. And then I see it. A huge and imposing new construction. A warehouse big enough to host the world darts final. The gleaming white sign informs me that this is the ‘MEGAWASH’. I gingerly drive to the entrance. The building is enormous, and I don’t mind admitting that I’m a bit intimidated. This is car wash meets ghost train devised by the sort of mind that invented The Transformers.

I spend some minutes trying to navigate the control panel. It tells me that I will experience a complete bodywash, foam experience, high pressure rinse, blowdry, hot wax coating and…shinetex. Some of these words make sense, but as Eric Morcambe might have said, not in this order. Twelve pounds is efficiently removed from my bank account.

It is at the moment that the massive metal shutter in the left lane begins to rise slowly and ominously upwards that my courage starts to fail. I can see the cavernous darkness beyond, and I have no idea what lies within. If I drive in there will I ever come out the other side? I curse myself for being so rash.

But there is already a car behind me in the queue, so reversing back out is not an option. The driver at my rear is impatiently beckoning me forward. There is nothing else to be done. I drive slowly on.

At first there is only darkness, then I see a strip of lights not unlike those which would meet an airplane descending to land on runway at night. I continue forward until a green light ahead turns red.

I am not sure what I expect to happen next. What I know I did not expect in an unmanned car wash is what actually happens. I look right and see a shadowy figure in an anorak with the hood up standing at the driver’s door.

“Whatinthenameof blazes??!!!” I roar as the man motions me to lower the window. Unsure if it is a wise course of action, I comply.

“You’ve gone too far forward mate,” the shadowy figure tells me. “Would you mind reversing just a couple of feet?”

I do this and the anorak man disappears back into the darkness to be replaced by sprays of water and the whirring of a bright red spinning brush. I start to relax as this is more familiar ground for a car wash.

That is until I see a 12-foot orange fish swimming past my passenger side window. It takes me a few seconds to orientate myself and work out what is happening. The walls of the car wash have become huge cinema screens. The giant fish is replaced by a shoal of smaller fish, which then gives way to an enormous whale and then a turtle which seems intent on swimming right into my boot.

Transfixed, I watch this psychedelic scene through the suds on my windscreen. It is at once beautiful and disturbing. It reminds me of the sort of music video The Monkees might have desired to make once they had had enough of being a manufactured band and decided they wanted to concentrate on playing their own music.

The rest of this fairground ride of a car wash passes in a blur of scenes of aquatic nature, soapy water and a giant air drier. Finally, the giant warehouse spits me out the other side, blinking against the winter sun. I pull the car over to inspect the job.

There is another message from my wife.“Did you get the car washed?”

“Yes, it is spotless,” I respond, just before I notice that part of the wing mirror has fallen off.