You know when your computer goes awol and ceases to function as a logical entity, or respond to you, even when you’re swearing really loudly, you shut it down. Turn it off. Count to 30 (they always tell you that) and plug it back in. And ‘boom’, it’s working normally, just like before. Or you turn off the router because the WiFi is just not happening and the Ring doorbell’s not working and the alarm system won’t set and everything else WiFi dependent has totally fucking crashed!!! You count the statutory 30 seconds, turn it all back on and it’s like nothing was ever wrong. Alexa speaks again and has absolutely no recollection of the ‘outage’. Like she was in a coma.

I got home last night, made a cup of tea and just enjoyed the momentary peace. While Mel was ‘having her nails done’ after work, at one of the 17 new, cash-only, Vietnamese nail-bars which have sprung up on every corner. Then she phoned. Her car won’t start. In fact, it won’t anything. Oh.

It’s probably relevant at this point to tell you that it’s electric. Ohhhhhhh, electric…

So there’s gonna be no ‘pushing it’ or ‘jump starting’ or ‘bash the starter motor with a hammer’, kind’a thing. No. The car turned ‘on’, but nothing would engage, it wouldn’t leave ‘park’ mode. And there was a signal on the dashboard! A new one. A (fucking) tortoise!!! Oh. My. God. It’s… THE TORTOISE!!!!

What the fuck does that mean? And why was the car telling Mel that ‘the charging cable is attached’, when it (obviously) wasn’t? Ok, standard protocol: get out, turn off, lock it all and wait, yeah, 30 seconds, then unlock and try again. Did that work?? No. We’re still in ‘tortoise mode’. Whatever the fuck that means.

That’s why the car has an ‘SOS’ button, up by the dome light. Like the ‘Bat Signal’. And this was SOS time. It phones the hot line and they get a mechanic/IT-consultant to come round. But it takes time. So I went outside, fired up the dirty, polluting old petrol car and went to rescue my damsel, emitting a few carbons as I went. Yet as it happens, help arrived within half an hour. And what did he do?

He disconnected the battery. Not the BATTERY which runs the vehicle, but the battery. Like all cars have. Little one. And we waited 30 seconds and…

It was like nothing had ever been a problem. Everything lit up, but in a positive way, it was totally responsive, and this car talks as well as a million other fairly useless things which normal cars don’t do. And the tortoise had gone!!! Just like our tortoise, Shmoogy, many years ago, when I left him walking round the garden and he disappeared forEVER! No tortoise, no problem, let’s go.

And this is the world we’re in. We actually need to pull the plug on the whole place and count 30 seconds.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx