Author: admin

Les Imberts is a village, no, a few houses with a garage. The garage is where it all happened.

It is Sunday morning, The garage is closed. There are two sets of petrol pumps. One set is controlled by the garage and is tuned off, the other set is twenty four hours and is used with credit cards.

I pull up at the credit card pumps on the garage side, do the necessary with my card and the screen tells me to fill my car. The roadside pump is in use by another driver filling up.

A few seconds later my car moves slightly, a rather wide Mercedes has nudged my rear bumper.

A rather wide Belgian driver is pointing at the pump, then at me, and then at his rather wide Rolex watch.

I switch on a disdainful look but obviously do not make a good job of it as he now hoots as well as pointing at his watch. I blink at him and deepen my distain. He slams his car in reverse and does a wheelie out of the garage, I thought.

Not at all, he has swerved around the live pumps and stopped next to one of the dead pumps.

The driver at the roadside pump has filled his car and driven off. To my amazement the wide Belgian figure has got out of his car walked back to the twenty four hour pumps and done the necessary with his credit card and has been told to fill up his car.

A young French lad arrives, stops beside the roadside pump, tries to insert his credit card which he cannot but reads the screen that is telling him fill up his car.

I watch his expression as he pumps free petrol. He has a puzzled look at the garage, a puzzled look at the pump, a puzzled look for me and a puzzled look at the petrol nozzle.

The wide Belgian figure meanwhile is in no hurry. He has put his wide Belgian credit card into a wide Belgian wallet, stretched across his wide Belgian wife and put the wallet in a wide Mercedes glove pocket.

The French lad has filled up and disappeared in cloud of astonished and happy French dust, leaving the wide Belgian gentleman kicking a dead French petrol pump with a wide Belgian foot.

I have moved across to allow another car to fill up and to my surprise the wide Belgian body crosses to my car and snarls in the window.

“I have a problem with my petrol pump!”

I should not have but I could not resist it.

I shake my head “You don’t have a problem with your petrol pump – you have a problem with your intelligence.