I drove to Newport at lunchtime today for an appointment with Kay, our family osteomyologist, my first treatment since last summer. Kay has treated all of us at different times over the years. She checked her notes, and we were both surprised to find it's been over the past fifteen years that she's been helping our tense muscles and mis-aligned bones to return to the way they're intended to work. Recently, with the slow closure of my wound, many of the physical stresses on the rest of me seem to have diminished, though it's not stopped me worrying about my neck vertebrae being out of alignment, so this session turned out to be as reassuring as it was therapeutic.
On my way back across Newport, a 'low fuel' indicator light nagged me. I found a supermarket filling station, but to my horror, found I couldn't get the protective flap covering the fuel pipe to open. Something must be jammed I thought, but there was no way I could prise the flap open, and panic set in. I thought the best thing I could do would be to drive on until I could find a garage and get help, risking running out of fuel in the meanwhile. I made it across the conurbation and on to the rural stretch of the A48, a rather safer place to break down if I was going to.
I passed several filling stations, but these days they have one-stop shops attached to them rather than mechanics' workshops. I made it to Newport Road, a mile away from NG motors garage where the car gets serviced. Indeed, they found it for us. I rang Phil, who told me to look for an emergency cord pull in the boot that would release the flap. I did but none was fitted on such an early version of this model of VW Polo. The last mile'd driving in heavy traffic was un-nerving, but I made it OK. A cheery young mechanic came out and diagnosed the problem in just a few minutes.
It was a case of 'unintended consequences'. Somewhere in its previous history an unresolved fault with the electric windows. After we bought it, the only practical solution to emerge after several attempts to resolve the issue in the absence of spare parts for an eighteen year old car, was to exchange the central locking and window mechanism from the driver's to the passengers side. The available substitute mechanism on the driver's side was one from a passenger side door. It works fine, except that central locking has to be done from the passenger side. This is seldom an issue as Clare and I almost always travel together, and with the development of her glaucoma, I am now the sole driver.
On this occasion, I drove to Newport alone. The central locking system locks me in while driving. I don't like it, but Clare says it gives a female driver an enhanced sense of security from unwelcome advances from assailants. When I get out of the car all three remaining doors stayed locked. What I didn't know was that embedded in the central locking system is a magnetic device which locks the petrol cap. Normally on a car, the driver would get out to fill up with petrol and the cover flap would automatically unlock, but not on our car, unless Clare is with me and gets out to go and pay, or stretch her legs. We've always been together when visiting a filling station before, and it must be six months since I last bought petrol. From the garage I had a three mile drive on nearly empty to fill up at Pengam Green Tesco's, and made it OK.
Well, now I know what I needed to know, but that was an upsetting nerve wracking experience which took me some time to get over, so I walked later than usual in the day. Coincidentally my two phones and fit-bit all drained of power within the same few hours. As a result my so-called fitness record for yesterday says that I walk less than half of what I actually walked, and only slept for a couple of hours, both of which are untrue. No doubt the analytical algorithm will generate a reproach for being unhealthy, which will annoy me. So many smart info devices that aren't really a match for real experience. Such foolishness to rely on them for anything.
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