I decided to wash my car this morning as it's been a few weeks now and it was looking rather black, yellow, dead bug and bird contents. It got off to a good start, though I was kind of dreading cleaning the marks my passenger leaves on the side skirt for fear of what scratches were lurking underneath (to add to the ones already there!).

It seemed to take ages to clean the bodywork due to loads of yellow marks everywhere (tree sap?) and a fair few black spots that took a bit of rubbing. I also discovered my first 2 stone chips, one on the offside front bumper and the other on the nearside front wheel. As if that wasn't enough there's a few swirls appearing too which I can only imagine have come from me using the back of the wash mitt to shift the tougher marks, unless the drying towel does it? Needless to say, there are new black marks/scratches on the passenger sideskirt which can't be shifted.

I then moved onto the wheels, which, whilst washing the inside, I manage to injure my finger on some sharp part of the front brakes. I also then caught my hand on the wheelarch while getting up, cue the scraped skin and blood!

It rained on me a couple of times while doing this, the last of which was just as I was finishing which worked out ok as it meant I didn't have to dry the car after. So, I empty one of my buckets into the flowerbed which proceeds to splash a load of dirt back onto the side of the car! Out comes the hose again to clean that off and remove the nice rainwater. While doing that I notice the roof is now covered in black bits which the rain must have splashed up there, so I have to hose that off too (hose off meaning shift this dirt onto the side panels and bonnet). By this time the rain leaves off so the car now needs drying as it's covered in tap water.

The drying stage was pretty much the only one which didn't go wrong, I even remembered to remove the puddle of water from the spoiler this time before dropping the towel in it! So, job done I come inside and clean up only to find 30 mins later it starts chucking it down again.

It really feels like one of those days today; I'm sure by the time I go out in the car tomorrow morning it will be filthy again. Why do I bother!

I understand your frustration. I spent 2 hours cleaning and polishing my car on friday only for it to need another wash today.

I can sympathise. Due to an encounter with a seagull this morning (could have been an albatros by the size of the mess) I needed to give my car a quick wash this lunchtime. I'd given it the full works over Easter, so it didn't need another big wash.

Got it all nicely dried off by about 1pm, by three it was tipping down and looks likely to be raining for a while yet judging by the sky. The joys of living in Cumbria!