Apart from the entertainment factor, you never know what you\u2019ll learn.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d no sooner driven into the busy petrol station than realised I\u2019d parked yet again on the wrong side of the pump.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019d either have to reverse out and queue for the pump beside me, or haul the heavy tube over the roof of my car and force it into the petrol tank.<\/p>\n
Frustrated, I slammed the steering wheel with the heel of my hand and swore aloud.<\/p>\n
As I got out to haul on the tube, I saw a man at the next pump filling his big, gleaming SUV.<\/p>\n
The man was laughing at me, but in the kindest possible way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know why you\u2019re laughing,\u201d I grumbled.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy am I laughing?\u201d he asked, grinning.<\/p>\n
Ah God, I was always doing this, I told him. <\/p>\n
Even when I thought I was parking so the petrol tank was next to the pump, I always ended up at the wrong side.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a little petrol pump icon on your dashboard,\u201d the man told me kindly. \u201cBeside this is a little arrow that tells you what side to park at the pump.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him, dumbfounded.<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, that\u2019s only something you\u2019d get in big, new, expensive SUVs like yours,\u201d I groused.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d the man said. He was in his fifties with one of those knowledgeable but kind sort of faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in most cars now. I know these things,\u201d he assured me.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course you do,\u201d I complained. \u201cYou\u2019re male, aren\u2019t you? You know everything. Plus, you\u2019re never wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, all right,\u201d I said and got back into the car and stared at the dashboard.<\/p>\n
At first I just couldn\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n
Then I did. By Jove, there it was. A little petrol pump icon with an arrow beside it!<\/p>\n
I got back out of the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re right,\u201d I told him, utterly amazed and extremely grateful. I had been driving this car for three years, I told him, and I\u2019d never once spotted either the icon or the arrow.<\/p>\n
Now there\u2019s a useful little nugget learned from random conversation that will save me years of untold inconvenience and frustration.<\/p>\n
A few days later, I found myself in conversation with a young electrician about punctures.<\/p>\n
I was showing him the heavy black gadget with a kind of antennae coming out of it that looked like a mobile phone from the 1980s and which my husband had bought me.<\/p>\n
I declared that I could use this to inflate the tyre whenever I got a puncture.<\/p>\n
Oh, no, the young electrician explained, mildly horrified. This was only supposed to be used if your tyre pressure was down. It\u2019d be no use for a puncture.<\/p>\n
I gaped.<\/p>\n
Well, I complained, my husband had just taken it out of the box, mumbled something about tyres, told me to keep it in the boot of my car, and failed to explain anything.<\/p>\n
The electrician started laughing.<\/p>\n
He said that he\u2019d recently been working in the attic of a retail outlet. It was an extremely hot, cramped space.<\/p>\n
At one point, he needed to balance precariously for a minute or two – virtually swinging in mid-air, he said, using one hand to hold himself in place and the other to work on whatever he had to do.<\/p>\n
The very second he got into this position, the phone in his pocket started to ring.<\/p>\n
He took a very quick look. It was his wife-to-be. The electrician ignored it. The phone stopped. Then it rang again. Insistently.<\/p>\n
\n This was a signal that something was amiss. Still mid-air, he reluctantly put down the tool he was holding, reluctantly extricated the phone from the pocket, and reluctantly answered it.\n <\/p>\n
He was a bit brusque, he admitted, given the circumstances.<\/p>\n
In a panicked voice, his fianc\u00e9e revealed that she had a puncture.<\/p>\n
He momentarily considered asking her what the hell she thought he could do about her puncture, given that he was 100 miles away and swinging off a beam by one arm in an attic.<\/p>\n
He decided against that course of action.<\/p>\n
\u201cFind the spare wheel in the boot,\u201d he said tersely.<\/p>\n
The arm he was hanging by was starting to burn.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake it out and lean it up against the back of the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHold on, hold on, give me a minute,\u201d she said crossly.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight. Ok, so I\u2019m opening the boot now.\u201d<\/p>\n
His arm felt red-hot with pain now.<\/p>\n
The attic was stifling.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight,\u201d his fianc\u00e9e sighed. \u201cI\u2019m taking the wheel out of the boot now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGod,\u201d she complained, \u201cit\u2019s very heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n By now his arm was threatening to just give up altogether and detach from his shoulder.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cLean the spare wheel up against the boot,\u201d he said very slowly and clearly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, stand away from the boot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA man will see it. He\u2019ll stop and change the wheel for you,\u201d he nearly screamed.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be bloody ridiculous,\u201d his fianc\u00e9e retorted.<\/p>\n
Two seconds later – and in a very different tone of voice \u2013 she said: \u201cOh. Erm, there\u2019s a (well-known utility branded van) pulling up with two men in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The electrician hung up.<\/p>\n
That night she told him that the two men in the van had removed the punctured wheel and put the spare one on. They had then put the damaged wheel back in the boot for her.<\/p>\n
They had daughters themselves, they explained.<\/p>\n
They hoped that if they were ever caught like that on the side of the road, some man would come along and help them.<\/p>\n
Lean your spare wheel up against the boot?<\/p>\n
Worth a try when you\u2019re in a real fix, girls.<\/p>\n
See? The value of looking up from your phone and actually speaking to another person. You never know what you\u2019d learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A word to the doom scrollers who don\u2019t bother with small talk: never underestimate the value of random…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[38718,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-640415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ailin-quinlan","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}