Car Insurance - Zzzzzz

By David John Martin

For the past week I have been embroiled in the cantankerous struggle of renewing my car insurance. And it's taken its toll.

Until recently, I had always been content with the insomnia-related tradition of counting sheep. To help me get to sleep at night, I would imagine those fluffy blighters in a range of dozy scenarios, maybe a dreamy summer's meadow for instance, or hurdling over a five bar gate in an orderly, soothing, drowsy, manner...It never failed.

But now I can't seem to summon such innocent imagery, especially after a long day spent seeking car insurance advice from brokers, friends, my wife and my two-year-old son - whom all seem to have different, and credible, ideas for how and where I can get a good deal. Now when I'm trying to switch-off, instead of those fluffy harmless icons of springtime, all I can seem to picture is a constant stream of balding men dressed in pin-stripe suits, sitting in small mahogany-panelled offices, and looking back at me with a cold Hercule Poirot stare.

And unlike the gentle baaa-ing and lullaby score I had mastered in my head, all I can hear now is a garbled conversation of statistics, prices, indecipherable jargon and insulting presumptions about my driving capabilities.

But it gets worse. If I try to block it out, or strive to return to the summer meadow; with the buttercups, the babbling brook and the five bar gate - I do manage to succeed for a brief hopeful moment. Then the brokers arrive. It's an invasion. They storm the scene riding in the backs of black cabs, kicking down the gate, climbing out of the ground like the undead, and shooing away my sleep-aids with a quick wave of their canes and stern shouts of "exclusive" offers.

From here there is no escape, and a nightmarish scene of impersonation ensues. The brokers are baaa-ing now. They're not quite on all fours, but they are frolicking around the place, chewing on the grass, jumping the gate...trying to act normal. This once peaceful respite of my soul has been taken over and can never be reclaimed. At least, not until this issue of my car insurance is resolved.

It's beyond a simple irritation now. I've been forced to accept that a decisive best foot forward is needed, and soon. Not only is it an obligation to the laws of this country, as well as all the other good-natured drivers on the road, but also because I owe it to my sense of well-being. And most of all...I owe it to the sheep.

David John Martin escaped his car insurance insomnia by visiting http://www.confused.com/