ONE of the problems with living in a second-floor flat is that it is very difficult to wash your own car.

I suppose I could carry endless buckets down four flights of stairs. But you’ve been reading this column long enough to know how that would work out, bearing in mind I ended up sitting in a bucket simply because I was making mashed potato a few weeks ago.

And it’s not as if I could run a hose from my bathroom tap, through my flat, through my bedroom window, and then down two floors to the car park. Don’t think I haven’t considered it.

And standard car washes are out of the question. I do enjoy the spectacle and mild peril of a standard filling station car wash. For example, I like how the gigantic swirling brush runs over the windscreen, and the joy of finding out afterwards that it has left a million tiny scratches on the paintwork.

But the car I bought recently is a 12-year-old hard-top convertible, which is roughly 10 per cent mid-life crisis, 50 per cent brilliant, and 40 per cent “Oh, sweet mercy, where the hell is that water coming from?” If I went through a standard car wash, I might as well coat myself in detergent and run through Niagara Falls.

The only realistic option I have is to go to one of those hand car wash places that have taken over the many filling stations that have closed down because apparently we don’t need petrol any more. The existence of these car wash places is a paradox, a bug in reality, proof of simultaneous demand and lack of demand.

So that is where I went. I drove my filthy car, which was covered in a fine film of sticky sap and the feathers of birds which had unwisely rested on it, to a car wash place.

I steered onto the forecourt, and parked behind a car which was being attacked by four men armed with chamois leathers.

“No!” said one of them. “You go through entrance!” And he pointed to an archway which I had dismissed thinking it was the entrance to an automatic car wash. I am not sure why I thought there would also be an automatic car wash there, but I was on unfamiliar territory. Why would a car wash have car washing facilities? That’s the last thing you’d expect.

I drove muttering through the entrance – it was clearly previously a car wash in the premises’ filling station days – round the back, and came out on the other side of the forecourt. I switched off my engine, not wanting to cause damage to men who spend all day around cars with their engines running at a car wash on a main road. It was like not wanting to throw a chocolate wrapper in a bin because there was already quite enough litter in there.

A man with a cigarette limply hanging out of his mouth emptied a water cannon at my car. I laughed. My roof seals were working perfectly. What was I worrying about? I could have gone to an automatic car wash after all.

That’s when the water started coming in. From the ceiling, from the door, from, somehow, underneath me. “Well,” I thought, “this is suboptimal.” The man blasted my door window, and I was drenched. I might as well have had it open.

Then the deluge stopped. He motioned to me to move forward, as the dripping slowly subsided, while one of his colleagues squirted the car with what appeared to be weed killer. And then the car withstood an onslaught of suds as the chamois-wielding men arrived.

It was weirdly intimate, like having a haircut or a dental check-up. I wasn’t sure where to look, as these faces loomed in close. Still, at least the process was almost over. My trousers would probably dry soon enough.

No, wait! A second blast from the water cannon soaked me again. One of the men laughed. I can only assume they knew exactly where my car’s weak spot was. It was sitting in the driving seat.

Another bout of chamois and the outside was as dry as the inside was not. I opened my dripping door and handed over the cash and, wetly, drove away.

The next morning I found my car covered in a fine film of sticky sap, a number of white feathers, and a lavishly spread pile of bird droppings.