An Incident...

DH and I, like most people have had the family dramas...and regular readers would know that we've had the 'living beside a building development' dramas over the last 11 months, but we've just had a bit of drama on this holiday.

This morning at breakfast here in York, we had to share a table with an Aussie couple. They asked us if we had heard all the noise in the early hours of the morning. There had been a really loud noise they said and lots of screaming. Apparently the couple had looked out of their window later and had seen police officers with tapes etc. DH and I had heard nothing. When the man running the guesthouse came to the table with the breakfasts, the other couple asked him what had gone on in the night. 

He said that a young female guest had jumped from the first floor window of her room...she survived. Two paramedics had been called when she was on the window sill and they had tried to get her to move back into her room. They called the police when their efforts seemed fruitless. While the police were racing up to her room, the girl jumped. According to the manager of the guesthouse, she survived because she fell on a car...which had more 'give' than the concrete and bitumen of the carpark. How awful that someone felt so distraught that they jumped...we were all horrified by the news.

The young lady jumped from the window on the first floor on the right hand side at the front...

The manager then asked DH and I what car we had...we told him, 'the black VW Golf' and you know what I'm going to say next aren't you? Yep...she jumped and hit our hire car. The damage is visible but consists of a number of dents; some on the roof of the car, some on the passenger side near the windscreen. We had been told by the manager to park near the front door as all the angle parking spaces in the yard were taken. Parking beside the kerb outside the guesthouse requires a permit which we didn't have. 

The photo doesn't really show the dents that well...and those reflections don't help...there is one much deeper dent in the middle of the edge of the car roof where it meets the windscreen...but the damage is visible and the car hire company won't be able to re-rent it straight after we return it. But it could be a lot worse...if the girl had not have survived for example. 

So much of today has been spent speaking to the local police and 'The Safer Neighbourhood' unit so that we could get all those important Incident Numbers etc for Europcar, the hire car company. The police have been brilliant as they try to help us avoid paying the Excess. DH will give a statement tomorrow when the police come to the guesthouse...we don't have much to say as we weren't awake but we can identify the damage. 

After all that seriousness, here's a photo I took today downtown in York...

A little sideline perhaps! Lol