Christenings and car ornaments

I was out and about this morning to attend a baptism of the Roman Catholic variety.

Always a good show in my opinion with the fancy windows and the robes and the water pouring and the oil anointing etc. Only takes 20 minutes too.

Here’s one shot just to give you a wee glimpse of the proceedings and of the beautiful brand new Lily Louisa Jane. Lily’s dad (holding her in the picture) is one of my oldest and dearest friends.

Anyway…

I called in to the supermarket on my way home and parked next to a Honda that had about 10 little fluffy stuffed toys decorating the back window sill (is that what it’s called?) and it stopped me dead in my tracks. I utterly do NOT get the whole car ornaments thing. If there’s anyone reading who does get it, please don’t be shy, share, please, I’d really love to know. Honestly.

Is it perhaps just stuff that couldn’t fit in the house and overflowed out to the car?  OK now that sounds like I’m taking the p*ss but I’m not, well perhaps just a tiny bit :-)

Do these sensitive souls have houses packed to the gunnels with bric-a-brac? Perhaps they just really, really like dusting and having only the house to clean each week leaves them wanting more? Maybe in Honda's case her new man insisted the stuffed toys be gone from the bed and a mass migration event to the garage proved necessary in an effort to save the relationship?

It got me thinking.

I decided I had to see how many examples of car ornamentation I could find between the supermarket and home in an effort to quantify the issue in my town. When I visit others towns I might undertake the same ‘sampling’ experiment in order to understand whether south Auckland is geographically more or less predisposed to having car ornamenting types residing here. Maybe I could start the research and sell the idea to someone for an anthropological thesis topic? Cha ching!

So I left the supermarket and headed home.  Only after I had counted another 2 examples of ‘pimping by stuffed animal’ did I remember that I had my camera in my hand bag because I’d taken it to the baptism. These photos were taken while I drove so please excuse the lack of quality. Some cars were parked while others I had to actually chase to get the shot – nobody ever said the pursuit of knowledge was going to be easy.

As usual, you can double click for a closer look.

 

 

…and below is the piece de resistance spotted in a parking lot.

All this stuff was in the FRONT of the car! Well at least I think it’s the front – can be hard to tell with Beetles.

Double click to see how much stuff there is – it blows my mind!

My initial analysis of this phenomenon suggests that;

• south Auckland may well be the preferred haunt of the species known as genus ornamentalist
• they drive all sorts of cars but prefer those with a boot (trunk) rather than a hatch – the rear window sill being the preferred site for exhibiting the booty
• the ornament most preferred is a dog (in fact most often many dogs)
• the drivers of said vehicles looked ‘normal’ though I am certainly not accepting that without categorical evidence.