Rob's Blog

Snow joking matter
Feb 15th 2007 01:02

Ah, the snow. It was lovely. For those of you who missed it, last Thursday we had the kind of snowfall that made both London and Somerset look like a winter wonderland. It was the kind of snow that required cars to be dug out of driveways, and then pushed out of verges, and then pushed off grass... and, well - you get the idea. There was a lot of car pushing. But not my car. Oh no. My lovely little 1988 Polo was going strong and on Friday I wiped the worst of the snow from the windscreen (knowing full well that the wipers wouldn't like doing that job) and started on the now fairly familiar journey from Enfield to Sampford Brett. My first stop was to pick up fuel, and it was a stop that triggered a conversation that sparked a train of thought for the rest of my journey home that - whilst it didn't involve trains - did involve most other forms of transport. Anyhow, the conversation went a little bit like this: Me: Just this can of Red Bull, and pump number one please. Clerk: *looks quizzically at pump number one* Me: *checks that I've neither left a big puddle of petrol on the floor or a barbecue lit on the roof* Clerk: £21.45 *looks back at the car* Me: *checks again for any reason for that really funny look* Clert: Enter pin please *looks at the car, looks at me*... Me: ... Clerk: Blah blah blah blah? In situations like this the conversation is really rather scripted and all I expect to hear was “would you like a VAT receipt?”. This precise lack of expectation combined with a heavy Indian accent is the reason that I struggled so much during pure maths at college. Catching me off guard with a strongly accented question in a petrol station is very much the same as waking me from a daydream with a question about differential equations. Inevitably, the response is also the same. I smile and nod and hope I can work out what the question was before the situation becomes any more embarrassing. So I smiled and nodded and.... Clerk: Really? *looks at my car* Me: Ur... yeah... Clerk: And it works okay? Me: *christ what am I talking about!* .... Clerk: It works okay? With all the snow? At this stage I've now worked out that “Blah blah blah blah?” was actually “You drive that car in the snow?”. Well, it could have been worse - it turns out that all I did was miss the moment when I should have been offended. This slight on my mode of transport is coming from a man who's job is to look at cars and take people's money - in this respect I imagine he should be a fairly good judge of cars. Me: Oh. Yes. It's really rather impressive. Very reliable. Clerk: Reliable? More like surprising sir! Me: ... *shock* Clerk: Going far? Me: Somerset Clerk: ... urm... oh dear!... good luck sir! I take my receipt and my damaged man-pride, get in my perfectly functional and now fully fuelled not-quite-classic car, and drive off. After a ponderous (and I'm reassured to say positivity uneventful) journey home the question is now: do I get a motorbike license or a Smart Roadster?