I was not having the greatest weekend this weekend. I’d been fairly stressed on Saturday by trying to manically clean my old house, ahead of the buyers wanting a final viewing, while also being very exhausted because I’d just got my period and not in the best frame of the mind for the task! Then, I was up early on Sunday to get some stuff done – and perhaps find some time to relax – before we had to head out for a family party, when I noticed some new scratches on the side of the car.

At first I thought maybe I’d scratched it at my old house, or someone at Tesco had done when I briefly parked there on Saturday morning. I’d had an incident in that car park last year when a very lovely Irish lady, who waited for me and took full responsibility, had scraped all down the side of it with her massive car. That damage has only just been recently repaired too.

This time though, the car was on the drive all night before we noticed a few lines down both driver and passenger door. The paint dust was still there like it was fresh.

We also found my Oddbox veg delivery had been moved from where the delivery photo had it (out of the side passage behind the gate) and the box had been opened. The contents seemed unmolested.

They had opened the box with something that sliced it along the parcel tape, it wasn’t torn open. It is a jagged cut though, suspiciously like a key.

I wonder if someone was hanging around, perhaps looking to cause trouble, was intrigued by the veg box delivery (which was around 11:40 pm). Then after opening the box were disappointed that it was just a load of boring vegetables, then decided to scratch up my car in frustration!?

Why would somebody do this?

As I do, I turned to an internet search engine for answers on why someone would key a car (I am now trying to ween myself off Google and use DuckDuckGo!). Predictably, unhelpful… and possibly created more anxiety as to what my course of action should be.

Jealousy?

My car is a very boring, bog standard 2015 Ford Fiesta (consistently a top selling car in the UK, they are everywhere). So highly unlikely this was provoked by envy over that!

There is a house down seconds down the street with a drive full of extremely expensive cars, including a Lambo.. those are all fine (this makes us sound like we live in a ritzy area, we do not! I do not know how that family comes to have all those cars, which they change very frequently!).

Feuds?

Both myself and my partner are very drama free, and dare I say “boring” people, who actively avoid conflict… I highly doubt anybody out there has a personal feud against us. We live in a very quiet cul-de-sac that is primarily retirees, and a couple of families with fairly young kids (and that family with all the cars).

We speak to a few of the immediate neighbours out of politeness when we see them, and once helped the kids across the road get a ball out a hedge, but otherwise keep to ourselves.

There is a guy over the street who moved back in with his parents after his divorce. He did try to make conversation with my partner initially, but he tried to avoid making friends because he’s too awkward!

We had some sympathy for this guy for a while but he had a habit of sitting out in the street in his black BMW with the engine running, playing very loud music for hours, and smoking weed. Both obnoxious and terrible for the environment. This was every day, for hours – day and night – and for about two years! Other neighbours repeatedly asked him to move away from their drives. This guy has got to be late 30s at least.

His car disappeared a few months ago, perhaps he couldn’t afford it (what with the cost of living crisis), or his parents made him sell it for upsetting all the neighbours, or maybe it broke. Now he hangs out in a friends car, or at the top of the cut through, smoking his weed.

I don’t think any this adds up to a fit of petty vandalism! He’s just literally the only vaguely shady character we see around here, and it’s more pathetic than dodgy!

Frustration?

My car was parked on the drive since 1:30 pm on Saturday, well out the way of the road so I don’t see how its a result of road rage.

Final theory is that the veg box delivery person decided to protest my moving house?! Perhaps this place is less convenient on the route… Highly unlikely, I know!

For the box to also be opened we know the vandalism happened after it was delivered (when I get the confirmation email and photo at 11:40pm). I can’t imagine someone dropped that off, taking its photo.. then moving it, opening it and randomly scratching up my car.

Vandals are just dicks?

Again my best theory is someone saw an opportunity and thought they might get something good in my veg box, then were triggered by the sight of spring greens and a big courgette, then left the box alone and took it out on the Fiesta…?

Still sounds ludicrous! Plus that box literally says all over it that it contains vegetables… I don’t know what else you’d expect to find. And the stuff in the box seems fine, they’d didn’t chuck around my veg or anything.

It could just be some saddo hanging around wanting to make trouble for kicks? The delivery just caught there attention maybe. We are tucked away in a cul-de-sac but we do have a cut through a small nature reserve area that sometimes kids (and sad divorced men) like to hang about and smoke in.

What now?

I now feel very unsettled. It is difficult to understand why someone would do this – they have nothing to gain other than to cause upset, hassle and expense to strangers?

I’m thinking about cancelling the veg box now as I think I’ll feel to anxious about it leaving the gate open in case it draws attention. But then I have to go back to buying plastic covered supermarket veg to feel guilty about, and miss the fun of working out what to cook with the random selection I get every two weeks.

I don’t know what to do about fixing the scratches either, some of them are quite deep. To get the insurance to cover it I’d have to report it to the police to get a crime number, and that’s a whole thing I have never done before. Then I have to deal with the insurance and garages (which I only just did after the Tesco incident!) .. but, if I don’t do that then the scratches might rust and that’s a bigger hassle..!

I don’t know if I could do a good enough job at repairing them myself, especially as we had been thinking about selling this car in the next year or so.

And what if we get it repaired and it happens again? … Or something else happens?

Maybe we need to get cameras? But then do cameras make you more paranoid because you’d get alerted to just how many people hang around your house?!

It’s all just a nightmare really.

Why do people have to be so awful?