A DEGREE doesn’t make you immune to life’s little mishaps. It means when they happen, you handle them with dignity, passive-aggression and Ocado bags in the footwell.
Here’s how to deal with your Audi being rear-ended by a Lexus like you’re a serious adult with Le Creuset cookware and a Boden account:
Location, location, location
As Kirstie and Phil know, location is everything. Much as you wouldn’t live more than two miles from a cheesemonger or a Pilates studio, ensure your prang takes place in the sacred triangle of Waitrose, John Lewis or a National Trust car park. Ideally while reversing next to a hybrid driven by a woman called Fenella.
Be in a rush, but tastefully
You’re not late. That’s for people who take buses. No, you’re under pressure because the nanny’s in bloody Poland, there was no salmon en croûte at M&S and Oscar has viola practice. Naturally that means you’re a little distracted, but it is the price one pays for a full, curated life.
Be mentally elsewhere
You went to a Russell Group university and read the winners of the Booker Prize. Yes, perhaps that does make it harder to focus on trivialities like wing mirrors. It’s hardly your fault you got in a little scrape with a van while mentally running through Cordelia’s UCAS personal statement. Some of us are on a higher plane.
Suppress all emotion
Remember being bullied at grammar school? Take that repressed trauma and channel it. Do not shout. Apologise profusely, but with the controlled air of someone annoyed at not getting the artisanal sourdough before the bakery section closes. Refer to the incident only as a ‘kerfuffle’ or ‘a slight bump’.
Exchange details on bespoke stationery
Dig around for something tasteful and non-tacky to jot your details on: an invitation to a gallery opening, a leaflet about your village’s sustainable veg co-operative, one of your less successful watercolours. Write in either a beautiful copperplate or the unreadable hand of a medical professional.
Follow up with a needlessly verbose email
‘Just reaching out to say again how very sorry I am for yesterday’s little mishap at the garden centre. Can’t apologise enough and hope you’re managing the trauma. Warmest wishes, and please don’t text until Tuesday as we’re on a digital sabbatical.’
Be haunted forever
Refer to it always as ‘the Incident’ or ‘that Range Rover business’. Struggle to breathe when you spot a mum in an SUV. Use it as anecdotal material at dinner parties, therapy and yoga. Casually mention how the insurance premium increase was ‘ghastly’ and segue into a 40-minute rant about the legal action you took. This wasn’t meant to happen to you.
