Good ideas

A light went in my car last week. I know this because it told me so. No, it didn’t actually speak, it flashed up a warning light on the dashboard. The first thing I thought was how ironic it was to use a flashing light to tell me one of my lights wasn’t working. My second thought was, what if the flashing warning light stopped working? How would my car communicate that defect?

In my book garages fall into the same category as accountants and pickpockets, in that they speak a different language, and you generally feel, in coming into contact with them, that you’ve been robbed.

I once had a garage customer service representative give me all this spiel, that, frankly I had no interest in, on how Nissan had kicked themselves in the teeth by designing their cars so that things like light bulb replacements was easy for owners do themselves.

            ‘The thing is, we can’t really charge for this service, and anyway, its so easy to replace them,’ he said before disappearing into the workshop for an hour, and only then replacing it with the help of a fully qualified mechanic.

            So it was with my usual sense of foreboding that I took my VW in to have the light replaced. I sat like an expectant father in the waiting room while the operation took place and read a month old local paper, a magazine on boating, and Heat magazine. Apparently that woman who does the Iceland advert doesn’t have falsies at all.

Twenty minutes later a solemn looking customer service assistant ushered me to sit in front of him and told me he’d just printed out my bill. £6! I had to ask him to repeat it. It took every ounce of self control not to kiss him.

So you see it doesn’t pay to take a stereotypical view. Which is what I did when presented with a contract to sign for the job in Libya.

I don’t like contracts, even the name sounds uncomfortable. And they are always full of such odd English, the type you often her policemen using when being interviewed on the telly.

‘I was travelling in a northerly direction, and had cause to find suspicious a motor vehicle of a commercial variety, travelling at a speed excessive for the prevailing conditions, and in contravention of the roads traffic act of 1977, page 11, paragraph six, subsection, open bracket, A, close brackets. Upon stopping the vehicle I had reason to note the smell of alcohol emanating from the drivers facial orifice…’

When he could have just said ‘I stopped someone for speeding and suspicion of drink driving.’

So you see, contracts don’t actually contract things - they elongate them. Perhaps they should be called elongates?

I’ve found writing a book presents similar problems. The biggest being what to leave out. I find some of the most trivial things interesting, but I realise that not everyone else will. The issue of what to leave in and what to omit is vexing me, but I think I have a solution.

Travel Anecdotal X Factor. Or TAXFact for short. The premise is outrageously simple. When I’ve finished my first draft I’m going to make all the anecdotes compete with each until only one is left in. I know what you’re thinking; this might make for a short book. But think how good that one anecdote will be.

I mean, look at what the X Factor has produced. There’s wotsit, that fella with the chin, and the twat who answers its “Chico Time,” every time you ask him a question. And that black bin man who got ‘nil point’ at the Eurovision. I can’t lose with a formula like that.

And where did I get this fantastic idea? A light bulb went off in my head…