The first indication Malcolm McKenzie received of his predicament was when a neighbor loudly knocked on his door and told him his beloved Mini had plunged into a hole.
"I went out expecting a minor dip under a tire or something like that. But when I went out to take a look, I understood, oh, that really is a proper hole," he explained.
His automobile had dropped into a 10-foot wide opening, likely created by a mineshaft collapse, and McKenzie has endured 25 days caught in a bureaucratic "nightmare" trying to figure out how to extricate his Mini.
The hitch is that the property has no registered owner. The local council has stated it won't take down the barriers cordoning off the hole until land ownership had been confirmed. "It's a bit of a nightmare," said McKenzie, 36, a self-employed designer. "It's red tape everywhere."
McKenzie has resided in the area in Redruth for about a decade and in fact has a designated spot next to his house, but it is too narrow to be useful so he began parking outside a nearby bakery. He had verified with both the shop and the local authority that he wouldn't get a ticket.
"I'd finally felt like I was making progress, I had a dependable small vehicle that was fuel-efficient and easy to keep on the road. It signified I could at last focus on trying to save up to take my daughter on her aspirational journey to Japan someday. She's always wanted to go."
Then came that knock on the door on Saturday 1 November. "The person next door was quite panicked. The officers turned up and secured the zone off. We all had to remain in the houses because we can't get out without going past the collapse. The highways people arrived, erected the fence up, and then they returned and put a second fence up surrounding it as well."
It is believed the hole may be an unfortunate legacy of a historic local mine, a abandoned copper and tin mine.
McKenzie believed he would be without his car for a few days. But that short time have now become weeks.
An end may be approaching. The authorities has said it will cooperate with McKenzie to – temporarily – lift the fences to allow the Mini to be recovered. He said: "They have agreed to work with my insurance company's recovery team and try to arrange a day and an acceptable way of getting it out that ensures no anybody at risk."
The car has been significantly harmed and is probably to be written off. "On the bright side I can say my Mini met its end in style – not everyone can claim their vehicle was swallowed by the ground beneath them," McKenzie noted.
A representative from the local council expressed it felt sorry with McKenzie. But it added: "This collapse did not happen on council land. We have made the area safe and advised the vehicle owner that we will arrange to temporarily remove the barrier to allow him to retrieve the vehicle.
"Since no one owns the land, our barriers will stay up until property ownership has been established, and we will continue to monitor the surrounding area to guarantee everyone's security."
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