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‘Wassit abaaaaa?!?’ she asked with her usual charm and sophistication. ‘It’s about spending £1,200 on a repair at your garage and my car breaking down the next day.’
‘Yeah, but wassit ABAAAAAAA?’
‘It’s about you putting me through to the most senior person there before I contact my solicitor.’ This was a mistake. She put me through to a call centre hundreds of miles away, as per instruction on the crib sheet — ‘If customer threatens legal action…’
But with a little ingenuity, and much swearing of the kind that has no doubt landed me on a private security contractor’s files and possibly the national DNA database, I managed to get myself directed back to the principal dealer. The conversation was a revelation. I had no idea how much I knew about the modern internal combustion engine until I began to argue with the Peugeot showroom on Clapham Road. I have been labouring all my life under the illusion that I am no good at science or technical stuff, that my head will explode if I dare to put more than three numbers into a calculator or fiddle for longer than a few seconds with a fuse and a screwdriver.
After talking to the ‘experts’ at Robins & Day in Stockwell for a few minutes I suddenly felt as if I had a PhD in mechanical engineering. I never knew I knew so much about engine management and catalytic converters and exhaust gas recirculation valves. ‘Did you tighten the wires after fitting the new coil pack?’ I found myself asking, startling myself as the strange sentence came out of my mouth.
‘Er…I did tell you there might be problems after fitting the coil pack…’
‘Yes, and I’m telling you why. Did you tighten the wires?’
‘Er…it might be something to do with the cat…’
‘Nonsense. Cats last longer than six years.’
I have no idea where this knowledge came from. I can only assume that when my father was discussing some of the finer points of his working week as a process engineer at the Sunday dinner table some stray bits of information drifted over the roast chicken and got wedged in my brain by mistake. I am now starting to wonder what else I don’t know I know. Are there other areas of untapped expertise inside my brain and how should I go about harnessing them? Do I actually know how to fix a plug? Or indeed a lunar command module? I think I should find out.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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