By Dick Smith

A couple of years ago I was having a pleasant holiday on Niue Island with my daughter and her husband who own a small cottage there in one of the villages. Unfortunately my equanimity was rather challenged when I received a message telling me that my wife, who had not wished to accompany me to Niue had driven her car backwards down the steep driveway and lodged it securely in the fence between said driveway and the neighbour’s house. I was however reassured to learn that other members of the family had taken things in hand, that the insurance company had been notified and the car taken to a panel beater.

On returning to N.Z  I was given further details explaining that she had in fact left the car running with the brake not fully on and with the gear level in Neutral rather than Park while she checked the mail box. She had also tried to get back into the car but fortunately had failed, an action which certainly saved her from, at least a bad accident.

The good lady is unfortunately not a person of particularly even temperament and within a very short time was complaining quite loudly of not having a car to use. (She refuses to use mine which she says is too big.) She decided the panel beaters were being far too tardy, completely forgetting the fact that they had $8000 worth of damage to repair.

Being a person of infinite kindness I decided to take the matter in hand and went searching for a nice little car for her to use in the meantime. In the back of my mind was the possibility that if I got a really nice, really small car she might like it so much that we could sell her much larger one.

But of course as Robbie Burns once said in a moment of enlightenment “The best laid plans of mice and men… etc…”

I bought a tiny little Daihatsu and brought it proudly home and showed her. 

“I’m not driving that rubbishy little thing.” She announced with her nose in the air. “I’ll wait for mine to be fixed.”

Well in a way that was a good thing but what was I to do with the extra car.

Being a man of infinite lack of common sense I decided to use the thing myself and save myself heaps of money as my X Trail is a shocking gas gobbler and the little Daihatsu would, as they always say “run on the smell of an oily rag.” Good thinking Dick Smith.

This cheap running little import from the Far East had a modern innovation that many more recent cars also have. It had no hand brake, instead having another footbrake in its place, a feature that I have grown to detest (to put it mildly.) It also had a very small and slippery footbrake that my large and rather clumsy foot tended to slip off giving me a number of rather anxious moments, not to mention a totally destroyed recycling bin and a damaged brick wall and a little cheap panel beating.  My foot does not slip off the large footbrake of the X Trail and if it did I would grasp rapidly for the handbrake a feature I find comforting even if I don’t normally use it.

I am not usually a person of a nervous disposition but as my foot continued to slip off the footbrake of the Daihatsu from time to time and as I became more and more desperate in my stabbing attempts to locate it my driving became fraught with unneeded tension.

But of course I am not a man to give up. “I must overcome this wussy behaviour,” I said to myself,

To my neverending regret I did not overcome it. It overcame me.

On the day that saw the final demise of the Daihatsu I reached the top of the drive and edged my way slowly downwards…nervously.   My foot slipped off the brake. I lashed out blindly with my foot and failed to connect with either of the foot pedals. The car sped up and raced inexorably and recklessly forwards. What could I do? Chaos awaited me at the bottom. Desperately I swung the car rightwards and through the fence almost immediately opposite the part my wife had previously demolished. Fortunately the car was brought to a halt before it entered the neighbours bedroom. The thought of the neighbour’s wife gesticulating angrily at me while clasping shut her night things haunts me to this day.

I called my son who hauled the car out of the fence and up onto the road. He also fixed both the fences and as he is a fencing contractor restored them beautifully.

I called my son in law who is a Trade Me whizz and he managed to get more for the car than I thought possible but it was still an expensive way to highlight my stupidity.

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