Wiped out...

I tried ignoring the flapping rubber for a while, but you can only rely on it not raining for so long and, as I was passing a wiper blade shop, I went in and purchased two for a pound.

It wasn’t my first purchase to try to solve the flapping problem. Earlier in the week I’d purchased the wrong size, believing that this time the twenty inch would work despite knowing that I really needed an Eighteen. My second pound shop purchase was the right size though.

Now all I had to do was fit it.

I don’t know why I do it, but each time I need a new wiper blade I make the same mistake and try to fit it myself. It looks so easy. They simply clip in don’t they? Well, not quite. There are those fiddly plastic bits that need to be fitted and there seems to be dozens of alternative fiddly bits to deal with. Those fiddly bits seem to break easily too, especially when you try to use force to make the bloody thing fit.

After ten minutes of struggling, two broken fiddly bits, and a lot of F@*+ing swearing I gave up and stormed back inside the house. Of course my wife asked if I’d ‘managed it’ to which I responded ‘no I hadn’t’ and that the bloody fiddly bits had self-destructed in my hands like the tape recorder from Mission Impossible.

“I’ll have a go,” she said.

Smiling wryly I watched her leave the house in the knowledge that she’d soon be back clutching a couple of broken fiddly bits with a big imaginary ‘F’ on her forehead. There was no way that she’d be able to do it if I couldn’t and sure enough five minutes later she was back.

“There, that’s done,” she said rubbing imaginary dust from her hands in an exaggerated and altogether unnecessary manner.

I don’t know what she did or how she did it, but she had fitted my windscreen wiper without any difficulty at all. I know because I checked by flicking the stick thing in the car that makes them go back and forth. I tried it at every speed, almost draining the washer bottle to make the bloody thing break and fly off… but it didn’t.

Maybe I’ll stick to flower arranging in future and leave the heavy engineering to her.