I must start this article (is that what it is?) by apologizing to Thomas — titles are not covered by copyright legislation, so that’s one reason why I’ve stolen it. Another reason? It just feels good to say (loudly). Thirdly, a shameless attempt to piggy-back Thomas’s success. His series has a large readership, and that should be envied, unless of course your car and YOUR parking job are featured and you are bothered by that. This said, the series appears to be concluding (if 6 of 7 does in fact mean there is only one more), and HOLY CRAP, my car has not made it into the paper. And we’ve tried, god knows we’ve tried. We parked sideways. We set off our alarm. Left the lights flashing. Tried to box in Thomas’s car. Opened all our doors — wide. Attempted to draw Thomas over by willing our car to emote the words, OVER HERE! HEY! TICKET ME! I’M WORTHY! SNAP THIS!

So, if you’re still reading this, and hoping it will somehow be part of Thomas’s fun feature, well, sorry. I did kind of trick you. This is, instead, the continuation of the Eggman saga.

Where to begin?

It’s hard to start, really. First, on March 18, minutes before the

Holy Crap!

by Lesley-Anne BOURNE

Stephan, Jeff, Marieve, and Matthew in the heat of competition.

Kinder Egg Olympics ‘began in the Cadre office, there was one Cadre person eating popcorn out of the garbage. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

No, maybe it is.

Burnt log, is how he said it tasted.

Ah, I said. Must be Orville R’s new gourmet flavour.

Charred taste and all, the

The preliminary stage.

{8]

Cadre person kept eating. (To be fair (why should I? — see reference to first Eggman competition), the pop- corn was in a SEALED bag which had been microwaved (burned within an inch of its kernal life) and then subse- quently (wisely) discarded without any attempt at consumption.)

This maybe explained what happened next.

The editor said, HOLY CRAP (or something like that)! Who stole the Kinder Eggs outta my desk?

That’s right. This contest was sabotaged.

Let’s reflect on how there was once the suggestion of bribery on my part during the first competition.

Let’s think about how, just perhaps, some Cadre person (or more than one) was so afraid of the level of architecture in the KINDER surprises in said eggs (which went missing, half of the stash designated for the official much-anticipated contest), that he (probably a he), panicked and felt compelled to destroy/hide/eat the stuff (the chocolate part, I mean, but maybe he also ate the plastic toy pieces (see reference to burnt log popcorn)).

I’m _ surmising that some Cadre person has x-ray vision and

knew which toys would be easier to put together (as it turned out they were all fairly basic, the ones that were actually used in the contest which I’ll try to get to soon). Or I’m guessing that maybe the Cadre staff used the eggs we couldn’t find as practice (did- n’t help much, that I could see). Perhaps, at the eleventh hour one time when getting the paper out (really, those deadlines are brutal and numer- ous), they were just really famished and there was no scorched popcorn to be found.

Anyway, there were only six eggs left. Six eggs. Four hapless (should I say hardy?) participants. Stephan, Je(ph)ff, Mar(ph)iéve, and Matth(ph)ew. One judge (the person writing now), a watch with a second hand, and an official photographer (hiding from drivers), (ph)Thomas.

I checked the eggs’ contents first. This was the preliminary stage. The compulsory figures, so to speak. There was no French judge. No deals were made ahead of time. Only one egg was disqualified (after testing positive for being way too easy to assemble). I collected all the illustra- tions which showed how the toy SHOULD look, the instructions, the warnings which said small parts could choke. (This worried me momentarily, again, when thinking back to what Cadre folks may or may not ingest (garbage).) The competitors were given their pieces, and nothing more.

I counted them down. Five, four, — you get the picture.

They were surprisingly tense.

One or two of them with good reason, it turned out.

Stephan had two (yes, two) toys to put together. The first one I selected for him seemed way too easy. (It was — he finished it in less than 45 seconds. ) (Descriptions of put-togeth- er Kinder surprises will follow, I promise, somewhere, really, honest, in this way-too-lengthy-when-all-you- wanted-was-the-parking-report arti- cle.) He finished the second one at- around two and a half minutes, after