Kiss?

All was well as Henry (the car) and I rolled tranquilly through the blistering August world. Then I noticed an orange light. Henry doesn’t like it if I ignore his orange lights, and I don’t like Henry’s orange lights – I see them as a harbinger of doom.

I fished out his manual and waded through page after page dealing with the correct procedure for fitting child seats, and eventually found Display Panel Warning Lights.

It was less than informative – Check the brakes, it said; not comforting for someone who lives in the unflat countryside around Arboleas. Acting upon reliable advice I betook us both to Autofex GoCar on the Arboleas Poligono.

‘Drive it in and we’ll have a look.’ I don’t think Henry heard this – if he had he would have been offended to be referred to as ‘it’. I drove him into the cleanest garage I have ever seen and abandoned him and the dusty evidence of his tyre tracks on the immaculate floor. I left him to the ministrations of a young man with a mask, an air of confidence and a plastic seat cover.

The span of my concentration was now exhausted, so I wandered off to look at a sort of beach buggy – it looked fun, had I been much younger.

My musings were interrupted by the young man.
‘Kiss?’
I looked round. I was the only person in the vicinity. I looked again. There were no parrots with inappropriate vocabulary visible either.
‘Kiss?’
I was nonplussed. The offer must have been made to me – I was the only one there. And I was being propositioned by a dreamboat of a man young enough to be my son’s son.

What should I do? Common decency declared that kissing a complete, if desirable stranger was inappropriate, yet I didn’t want to appear rude, especially as the viability of Henry’s brakes were at stake.

He held up his hand and made a turning motion; comprehension dawned – he had said Keys with a Spanish accent!

I climbed down from Cloud Nine – my predicament resolved and my blushes spared!