The phantom egger strikes again... and it's still not funny (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

The phantom egger strikes again... and it's still not funny

12:35pm Tuesday 3rd July 2007

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I sympathise with Joolz Denby who recently fell victim to egg-throwing louts, for I too have suffered at the hands of Bradford's Phantom Eggers. Joolz wrote in a recent blog about someone hurling an egg at her, striking the back of her head.

Thankfully in my case my car took the bullet, or rather the egg, but even so it was pretty unpleasant.

I was waiting at Shipley's main traffic lights, just sitting in my car minding my own business one evening, when I heard an almighty bang. I thought a stone had flown up at the car, then I looked in my rear view mirror to see a car full of lads laughing behind me.

Then I noticed egg yolk sliding down my back window and realised what they'd thrown at me. Hilarious.

It was then that I started to feel both angry and embarrassed at the same time. I wasn't prepared to get out and confront a car full of jeering buffoons so I tried to pretend I wasn't particularly bovvered. All I could do was just sit there, willing the traffic lights to turn green, feeling my face getting redder.

I looked again in the mirror at the gigglers behind me and realised that they weren't, as I'd first thought, a bunch of daft teenagers - they were grown men. Grown men with nothing better to do than drive around chucking eggs at lone women drivers. Presumably grown men with wives, girlfriends and daughters to go home to.

To be honest I was more bothered about the car than myself so once I'd driven home - thankfully the car-full-of-grown-men went off in another direction, presumably to egg more victims - the first thing I did was inspect the vehicle for scratches or dents. I attempted to clean up the sticky mass of yolk and shattered egg shell splattered across the window and boot but couldn't clear it up properly until I had time to wash it. It took at least half a dozen full car washes over the following weeks for the congealed, solidified mass to start coming off.

I'm with Joolz on the view that, while it might seem like the kind of jolly wheeze that the Bash Street Gang got up to, egg-throwing is anything but funny if you're on the receiving end. And the kind of twenty-something men who get their kicks out of chucking objects at women's cars while laughing like maniacs are likely to be the kind of men who go on to do much worse to women.

On a lighter note, another car I had was once attacked by a frozen shrimp. Yes, a shrimp. I was returning to my car in a supermarket car park to discover that someone had decided to throw half their food shopping across the ground. A frozen shrimp had been smeared down my car door and a couple more lay forlorn next to a front wheel.

It wasn't until I'd driven halfway home, stopped to get petrol, and was walking back to my car at the petrol station that I noticed something perched on top of my radio aerial. As I walked towards it I realised it was a pink shrimp, staring at me with its beady little black eyes. Whoever had trashed the car park with frozen food must have put it there - and I'd been driving along with it sitting on top of my car.

It was so surreal it felt like it wasn't really happening. "It's a shrimp," I heard myself telling a bemused man who'd pulled up at the petrol pump behind me to see me reaching up and pulling the thawing crustacean off my aerial. I drove home in something of a daze, trying to suppress fits of laughter. You can probably get pulled over by the police for driving alone laughing uncontrollably like a mad woman.

When I got home and told my flat-mates what had happened I finally collapsed in giggles, while they looked at me oddly. Even now, several years later, whenever I see a frozen shrimp it still makes smile.