Two Bits: Grid Girls and the Carwash War

Formula 1 car racing – indeed, almost any car track racing – has always been about as interesting for me as watching flies buzz around in a bottle.

The decision by the racing authorities to ban ‘grid girls’ – the gorgeous model types who held umbrellas over the drivers to shield them from sun or rain before the start – takes the only remaining shred of attraction out of the sport.

There seems to to be a new killjoy mood sweeping the world, perhaps as a belated reaction to the illicit fun the Baby Boomers had in the Swinging Sixties and Sexy Seventies.

You don’t believe the Seventies were fun? Watch a rerun of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ to catch the mood of the times.

I blame Disco for what happened to the Eighties and it was all downhill from there, to the point that people today seem to get their kicks from backbiting and shallow moralising on Twitter and Facebook.

Thing about small town life, sometimes what happens out in the big world gets reflected here and it’s not always the good things. For example, I blame the bureaucrats at the municipality for banning our very own grid girls.

You didn’t know we had grid girls? That’s because you haven’t heard about the Carwash War that’s been raging in the Ballito business park. It’s been the talk around the braai for the past couple of months.

The Ballito Car Wash had been getting along at the back of The Quarter for years, doing what car washes do, when some new guys set up shop just down the road at the end of Nathi Mthembu Drive. They call themselves Green Dolphin Car Wash. Why ‘green dolphin’ I dunno, maybe it sounded exotic.

Anyhow, after bragging a bit about being the best in town etc. (with free coffee while you wait), they took the unusual step of placing a grid girl on the pavement outside The Quarter.

This is a lady under an umbrella with a sign pointing to their place of business. How this came about, says Green Dolphin manager Reggie Modley, was when he placed just a sign on the pavement, the traffic cops told him a sign had to be ‘manned’. Being a unisex world where women have equal opportunities, the ‘manning’ became ‘ladying’.

Sounds a likely story to me, but what do I know. However, it infuriated the owner of the Ballito Car wash, Mike Murphy. He complained long and hard to the municipality about this illegal outdoor advertising, to no avail. For five months he complained to the municipality, the UIP and anybody else who would listen. It got him precisely nowhere.

It’s not always a wise move to pick a fight with an Irishman. They don’t know when to give up. So, this Irishman thinks to himself, if I can’t beat ’em, I’ll join ’em. Last week he got himself his very own grid girl.

He installed her under an umbrella on the pavement right next to the Green Dolphin grid girl, with a sign bolding proclaiming ‘`Even Better Car Wash’, as you can see in the photo.
A bare three hours later, the municipality was on the phone instructing Murphy to remove his illegal signage pronto, followed by an email with an application form to apply for a licence for outdoor advertising.

“How’s that for a quick reaction?” asks Murphy, who’s quite chuffed with his little ruse. It got instant action when no amount of polite complaining had succeeded.

And as the bureaucrats had told Murphy’s grid girl to furl her umbrella, so to speak, they had to be seen to be even-handed. Reggie confirmed that he had also been told to remove his grid girl and fill in a form.

So, even Ballito had its moment of excitement with real, live grid girls but alas, no more. Car washes just won’t be the same.

* * *

The Irish are always the first ones to come to the aid of their fellow man.

Shortly after take-off on an outbound, evening Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Boston, the lead flight attendant nervously made the following painful announcement in her lovely Irish brogue:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m so very sorry, but it appears that there has been a terrible mix-up by our catering service. I don’t know how this has happened, but we have 103 passengers on board, and unfortunately, we received only 40 dinner meals. I truly apologize for this mistake and inconvenience.”

When the muttering of the passengers had died down, she continued, “Anyone who is kind enough to give up their meal so that someone else can eat, will receive free and unlimited drinks for the duration of our 10-hour flight.”

Her next announcement came about two hours later:

“If anyone is hungry, we still have 40 dinners available.”