The key to sucess

Braving the early-morning cold, with its bitterly South-Westerly force 2 or 3, sometimes 1, ocassionally 4 (something there for fellow shipping forecast listeners) I sat glowing in my success at scraping Nature’s silver sheen from my car windscreen, stuck to it as it was like the silver guilding on the sleeves of pre-school jumpers.

I take my captain’s seat and tell Mr Sulu to fire up the engines. By which I mean I turn the key. And I’m greeted with a sound much akin to a 70 year old man who has spent his life working two jobs; one as a coal miner, and the second involving breathing in large quantities of asbestos, perhaps at n asbestos grating factory should such a thing exist.

It occurs to me that my shiny new car (nicknamed ‘The Enterprise’ for its unnecessarily large structure and a log book declaring its colour to be ‘Starship Silver’) may not want to go to work today. In a split second my mind races away like a Nasa supercomputer. In 0.3 of a second it has run through the process of phoning work and saying I won’t be in today. By 0.5 it has worked out what I’m going to say to the local garage and a useful bit of witty banter about why I haven’t been making my usual 5-weekly servicing appointments now I have a new-fangled Hdi engine. With the next 0.3 of a second I see a kaleidescope of activities flash before me, as I run through the options for planning, cycling, practicing and eating away my day while the car is fixed.

Then, at 0.9 seconds it occurs to it to maybe, just maybe, it might be wise to try the engine again.

The engine starts, and in just 1 second my day has gone from 100mph to 0 and back again.