With practice, can use simple tools

It was the first snow of winter yesterday. It was also the day I had to drive to Newark. It's not enough they put the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and the cars on the wrong side of the road, I had dig the car out of the snow before I could drive it.

Being British, I started by brushing at the windows with my sleeve, but there was quite a lot of snow and it was going up my arm. I then remembered seeing a stick in the boot. That might work, I thought. When I retrieved it, I saw it had an ice scraper on one end and a long brush down the handle. Having decided that the brush must be for the upholstery, I set to work clearing snow with a three inch ice-scraper. After about five minutes of pushing the snow back and forth with a small square of plastic, I tried - in the spirit of scientific discovery - sweeping the snow away with the upholstery brush. Would you believe it, it worked really well! It's quite ironic that they put that upholstery brush on the stick and it turned out to be better at clearing snow than the ice scraper.

It occurs that this story is really quite boring. Sorry about that. Luckily, this blog has a current readership of one, being me, and by the time it has risen to its rightful place as the premier blog about America through British eyes, this post will be so far back in the archives that no one will read it. Serendipity at work right before my eyes.