It's MOT time and I had to take my care to Kwik-Fit to get the front two tyres replaced. I can only presume they call it Kwik-Fit as some kind of ironic joke, or satire of the car mechanic trade, as I was sat in their waiting room for at least an hour and a half.
I have never been the kind of man who is interested in cars and it's only in the last three years that I've even driven (I only learnt when I was 26 and the lessons cost me so much that I couldn't afford to buy a car, although at least I did get an amusing comedy character out of it, based on the money-grubbing man who taught me - although he never said, "You can't even drive", he did say things such as "Would you say you had common sense?... then why did you do that," and also compare my driving to that of his teenage nephew). I see cars as a means of getting from one place to another and in most cases I prefer to use public transport to do that anyway. I am lost if the conversation ever turns to specifications or whatever else it is that men seem to want to talk about.
In the waiting room one of the other customers noticed that I had brought in a VW Golf. "How do you find the Golf?" he asked. He wanted to have the conversation. I was trapped and I was going to have to do my best and just hope he didn't ask me any questions that needed a numerical answer. "Yes, it's a great car," I told him.
"What do you think of the new one?"
"I haven't really seen it up close, but I expect it is good... because Golfs generally are and so an improved one will probably be better."
I thought I was floundering, but he seemed impressed by my answer and agreed with me. I was getting away with it.
"Everyone says the Golf is a great car, " he said, "If I won the lottery tomorrow I'd buy a brand new Golf. How does it handle?"
I don't really know what this means, but I believe the correct answer is "It's very smooth" (or preferrably "She's very smooth"). I tried to think of an additional Jeremy Clarksonesque simile, but I only came up with "like smooth yoghurt with no bits in it," so I chose not to add anything at this juncture.
Again the man was happy with this response. "Suspension?" he asked.
I wondered if the answer was, "Yes, I think it has some of that," but wasn't sure it would suffice, so just nodded my head and tried to look knowledgable and said "Yeah, good." He nodded back. I chanced my arm, "Smooooth," I said.
"Yes, if I won the lottery I'd buy a brand new Golf," he told me again, just in case I hadn't understood the first time. Myabe by saying it twice he thought he increased the odds of it happening.
There was a hiatus and I panicked a bit and realised that in this male ritual it is traditional for me to return the favour, so I said, "Which baby are you driving?" (OK, I said "car", not "baby", but I said "car" as in the same way as I would say "baby" - you have to do that when you talk about cars).
"The Honda Civic," he replied pointing at the red car.
"Mmmmmmm," I said, having no idea what that choice of car indicated or what the car was like. But I said, "Niiiice" anyway. But in a way that indicated that in an ideal world and after a lottery win the car would be traded in for a Golf.
I went back to reading my paper.
I talked about cars briefly with my date tonight, because I'd just been to the garage, right near the beginning of the evening. This was the first time I'd met her. "What do you think about personalised number-plates?" she asked.
I considered telling her all about CNPS and how personalised number-plates were often a life-saver in this modern world of changing number-plates. But I thought she might think that I was a bit strange or something. You can't really bring up CNPS until you've been dating someone for a few months and even then it's best not to mention it.
"They're all right."
I think I got away with it.
