What do you mean, you don't know how?

“The car’s beeping again.” He says to me trundling in to the house soaked with rain and looking pretty glad see that I had already been home for 2 hours and am sitting in my pants swigging my second lager of the evening.

“What’s it want this time?” I said drolefully, indicating I was undressed and was certainly not moving from the sofa tonight, unless I had good reason, like to get another beer or to order Chinese.

“Oil.”

“Oil? Just buy some more and stick it in don’t you?” I replied like it was no big deal and I had done it a thousand times before. Unbeknown to him, I had not and had always just used prayer or my mate Dave to deal with that type of thing.

“I don’t know how to add oil to an engine, I’m not an engineer.” He says like only people like Steven Hawking can do simple car maintenance.

“What do you mean you don’t know how? You’ve owned a car before haven’t you?” I say totally ignoring the above facts about Dave.

“Yes, anyway what oil?” he asked inquisitively.

“Just the most expensive.” I say like I am master of all car knowledge and think that this will please him.

“Now that I can do!” And he trots off and gets in to his pants to watch Living TV and drink beer.

“Ahh the perfect evening” I think. “I have solved the manliest of manly issues and I am here having a beer, Chinese and possibly a bit of how’s ya father if I’m lucky.”

I smile and we go off to bed.

The next evening, I’m there again, albeit, dressed and trying to find the perfect birthday present on ebay when the door swings open.

“I have it!” he shouts in a excited puppy dog way. Like he has done good and now I must reward him.

“What do you have?” I ask totally forgetting the events of the night before and that we even had a car at all.

“The oil. Now come on you can come and put it in, I’m sick of that winging car having a go at me for not taking care of it.”

“Shit. Meh, can’t be that hard, Dave can do it and he failed a BTEC in basic bricklaying.” I think anxiously to myself as I slip on my shoes and make excuses about my coat not being in the usual place.

So out we stand with a can of Castrol in a dimly lit street next to the council estate with some lads in Nike trackies and Diadora jackets watching us both.

“Go on then, you said you knew how” he says to me with a slight giggle like he knows I was bullshitting him.

I open the car door and pop the bonnet open. That I knew how to do, as I accidentally did it whilst trying to open the petrol cap the other day.

I look in to the engine, searching frantically for something that says “Put oil in here, like this, for this long” but no there is no such place, just a load of screw caps with interesting foreign pictures on them.

“I’d better get the manual, this aint a standard engine, not like my old car at all!” I say stalling and giving the, so I thought, perfect excuse to look at the instructions quickly and then I will surely know how to do it, wouldn’t I?

I sit in the passenger seat frantically trying to find the English section that tells me how to be a real man and change the oil.

By this point he had started to join in the laughing with the lads from the estate and I was getting a red face.

“You don’t know how, do you?”

“It’s not I don’t know how, it’s just that this one’s different and there’s no…”

“Well I’m off in I’ll see you later, probably tomorrow morning by the looks of it”

I sit there humiliated, my masculinity in tatters and my cool factor reduced to zero. I needed emotional support and advice, no man should have to suffer this kind of humiliation when it comes to their car.

So I did the only thing I knew how. I called the only person I knew who could soothe my emotional pain and make me feel like I am a real man. I pick up my phone and dial and listen to it ringing.

“Hello” an angelic voice says…

“Dave, it’s me, I have a problem….”