False Impressions

Last week I was driving over to pick up two close chums on our way to an Asian lunch threesome. Asian buffets here are all the rage at the moment. You know the form: for a flat fee, you get to help yourself to as much as you can eat. If Evangelos Venizelos walked in, you might find Chinese faces losing their inscrutability in favour of panic; but generally speaking, as a commercial model, it’s very profitable.

So I’m driving to meet Alan and Pauline, and I approach the main road. Across the way is a car turning right, and I look at the driver. I think, “F**k me, that’s a dog driving a car”.

When it gets chilly down here, the French often resort to the sort of Canadian fur headgear where you have flaps to cover the ears. The driver opposite me was sporting his flaps loose. He was also at the ugly canine end of the facial spectrum. Hence my false impression.

Lots of people talk about first impressions, but the experience of false impressions rarely fails to amuse and teach.

For two years now, I’ve been reading my gas-tank level pointer and feeling good about how little gas I seemed to be using. Today, while pottering about the garden in wellies I decided to look again at the level, and felt vaguely anxious that the needle was in the same place. This time, however, I tapped the glass very hard, and the needle shot round to the place that said 0% full. The other way of thinking about that statistic is 100% empty. It all depends on whether you’re a tank zero full or totally empty sort of person.

So it is tonight that I find myself giggling about this, but also learning how to cook on the log burner top in the main sitting room. Less amusing is the fact that it is a crisp, clear night outside….because Sod’s Law he say, “When gas tank run out, weather turn bollock-freezing”.

 For some reason, I feel obliged to point out that False Impression was also a mystery novel written by illiterate English author Jeffrey Archer in 2005. It would be impossible to get a false impression of how profoundly awful False Impression was.

Earlier at The Slog: The progressive deterioration in Ed Miliband’s mentality