It's a small world

Yesterday the world shrank. Let me explain.

We keep of couple of vehicles here. There’s a Chelsea tractor (otherwise known as a 4 x 4) of the Honda variety for going up and down the mountain roads and when we need to look a bit flash; and the other one is a chic little Renault for running around Beirut and its suburbs.

Anyone who has owned a car will know what is meant by an expensive noise. Early this week the sound coming from under the Honda’s bonnet seemed well into second mortgage territory, so off I drove it to car hospital. Was it sensible still to drive it? Well I’d discovered that the noise stopped when the air conditioning was switched off.

Now before you all start yelling “softy” or worse at me for worrying about air conditioning, let me remind you that the daytime temperature here is in the mid-thirties with the humidity number being rather bigger. If you need a Turkish bath in a hurry and can’t find one, just drive around for a bit with the A/C turned off.

With anticipation of a rather lighter bank balance, I headed off a day later to the local Honda dealer to pick up the restored car. At the collection and payment counter there was one other customer, a lady, likely of Northern European origin, judging by the lighter than local colouring. And then I heard English tones. There aren’t a lot of us Brits here, so that’s always enough to strike up a conversation, and after a little while, the following exchange took place

Me: “Whereabouts are you from, do I detect hint of the North of England?”
She: “Yes, you’re right, South Yorkshire”
Me: “Oh, really, where?”
She, “Sheffield, well, its suburbs”
Me: “Really, me too, I was born on Eccleshall Road”
She: “No, that’s where our house was!”

Now for those who may never have seen the glories of the city of Sheffield, Eccleshall Road is quite long, but even allowing for that, the chances of such an encounter would be expected to be limited.

Where would we be without that much maligned speech aid, the cliché. There’s one in the last sentence and here comes another. The world’s a small place, and, in my case, yesterday it got even smaller.