JUST TRYING TO BE USEFUL AND FRUGAL !!

HeeHoo despatched me to obtain new windscreen wipers for his motoring piece this week. I was humbled as it is after all his favourite car, (which he generally only allows me to drive when it needs fuel,) and it is vast, it must be the longest car in the world!

His exact words were "ask Ryan at Mercedes Tristar to order me some new wipers please dearest". However I was just trying to be useful (and frugal) and decided to go the cheaper and less bothersome route... Now HeeHoo's favourite motoring piece is fairly ancient but much loved. Beautifully maintained with a shiny walnut dashboard and fittings and leather seats and interior, I never really feel quite up to the task of being allowed to drive this elegant vehicle.

I parked tentatively outside a well known motor spares shop, quite forgetting that it is "a jungle out there".. As I emerged from the car, rather regally I thought, knees together nicely just like Princess Diana, I was almost bowled over by a furry of touts.

One virtually snatched the windscreen wiper from my hand and told me rather furtively that he had the exact one at his "shop" round the corner. I was overwhelmed with horror as I was suddenly surrounded by a group of glowering, gesticulating men. Hanging on to my handbag, I suddenly gathered courage and snatched back my wiper and fled towards the shop with an equally angry plethora of fellows in hot pursuit.

Fortunately the security guard spotted my discomfort and rushed at the mob brandishing his rhino hide shambok in a most stylish Kung Fu Fashion.

Having purchased the correct size wipers with relative ease, my next dilemma was how to face the angry lynch mob outside the shop. I was no longer a potential customer so the security guard had lost interest in me, so I tucked myself almost under the armpit of a bulky fellow shopper and scurried out.

The touts spotted me instantly and were inflamed that I had ignored their offer of cheaper wipers that had "fallen off the back of a truck". So they pursued me to HeeHoo's car belligerently offering their assistance to fit the wipers. My courage evaporated again as I lost control of my new purchase to one of the mob, and shot into the safety of the vehicle locking the doors. The main tout and an apprentice tout began to haul on HeeHoo's windscreen wipers in a most indelicate fashion, and to my horror the old were off and the new were on in a flash.

I handed a dollar bill through a tiny slit in the window and fled, quivering in my shoes as I thought of what HeeHoo would have to say at my rash actions.

Discretion however is the better part of valor and so I "forgot" to mention the incident to the great man in question. It was only the next day, when I was charged with the task of refueling THE CAR when the wrath of God descended on my head in the form of a serious thunderstorm, that I remembered my indiscretions.

One of our dramatic, wonderful, glorious thunderstorms began in ernest and I turned the windscreen wipers full on to cope with the gigantic volumes of water drenching the windscreen.

Suddenly the left hand wiper blade (the one that was fitted by the apprentice tout,) flew off its holder and impaled itself in the calf of a passing cyclist with the speed of one of William Tells arrows !!

Mortified I stopped the car and tended the cyclist, and then soaking wet and shivering in trepidation, I retrieved my wiper and drove straight to where HeeHoo had instructed me in the first place, safe into the tender arms of Ryan from Mercedes Tristar !!