My car is a Skoda Yeti. I didn’t buy it for the name, but had it been called a Skoda Doris I’d probably not have come home with it.
It is not very yeti-like — indeed it is box-like — but it is by far the best car I have owned.
And if any of those places are listening I would like them to take note.
Most of the car is helpful.
There is a drawer under the passenger seat that you can hide things in. In the boot there is a light that can be detached and used as a torch.
The rear seats fold down nattily and can even, I’m told, be lifted out entirely, though I would not dare.
A friend has rigged the car up to my cellphone so I can make and receive calls with the steering wheel.
That seems like magic to me.
So do the wipers and the lights that switch themselves on and off.
I don’t know how they know to do so and I won’t ask.
It is best not to peer into miracles lest they cease to be.
If the water turns into wine, praise the lord and drink it.
The Yeti also wants to fold me in its hairy arms and keep me safe. It has airbags to cushion me should folly or misfortune cause a crash.
It turns the radio down when I’m reversing, the better to hear the squeals of people I’ve run over.
And, in a bid to help me not run over people, it makes a beeping noise if I’m about to reverse into something.
The nearer the thing the more frantic the beep.
I have been tempted to run gently into something just to see what pitch the Yeti can reach, but perhaps it would just shrug and say "I did what I could".
I’ve been clearing out. This involved gathering stuff that was sure to come in handy one day and cramming it into the trailer.
Eventually the trailer was so full that I could no longer put off towing it to the dump.
I do not like to tow, even with the Yeti which is a tough little thing.
When towing I am always on edge and there is the hint of a bit of a suspicion of a lump in my throat.
If you are a manly man you will not understand that sentence. But I suspect more of us men are unmanly than is commonly supposed.
The hint of a lump becomes a throat-lump proper when I have to reverse the trailer.
The dump not only required reversing, it also required doing so alongside fellow dumpers who all appeared to be manly men.
I lined up a gap, getting car and trailer as straight as possible before starting, in the remote hope of keeping them that way and not having to work out which way to turn the wheel while the trailer was beginning to jackknife and choosing the wrong way.
I twisted in my seat to look over my shoulder, put the car into reverse and whoa, the Yeti went mad with its beeping.
I put the car back in drive. The Yeti shut up. I got out and looked behind the trailer.
Nothing. I put it back in reverse. Whoa, beeping. I put it in drive. The Yeti shut up.
In your manliness you’ve guessed it already. The Yeti was warning me that if I reversed I would run into my own trailer.
It was beeping at a danger that didn’t exist. And there seemed no way to turn it off.
You can imagine the result.
Add a screaming car to my pre-existing incompetence and an audience of the manly and, well, the gentleman who finally took pity and reversed the car and trailer for me, was terribly polite but trying very hard indeed not to laugh.
The Yeti’s efforts to help had only hindered. By trying to make things better it had made them worse. By not leaving me to solve my own failings it had exacerbated those failings.
Is there a proverb there?
Something about it being impossible to protect people from themselves. That the only true teacher is experience?
I thought about it all the way home then gave up and drank wine. Manlily.
• Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
