Tasha Dhanraj is being driven round the bend

After weeks of begging, I finally agreed to go to Hobbycraft with my sister, Tasie. Believe it or not, spending a Sunday morning hurtling down the A23 with my boyfriend and I crammed into an unpleasantly hot little Ford KA with my sister at the wheel, telling us all about the dinosaur stickers she wants to buy is not my dream. What made this vignette even better was the fact that the petrol meter was dangerously into the red.

Tasie had driven the R – registration plate car to Oxted the day before and for some reason was surprised to see that the petrol tank hadn’t been filled up overnight. Of course, a lack of petrol wasn’t going to deter her from driving 30 miles. That’s not the Dhanraj spirit! It wasn’t until we had all clambered into the car and were a good six miles from any service station that she felt the need to mention the dangerous predicament. The next five minutes of the journey was occupied by regular updates on the meter; “Ooh it’s on empty… now it is back in the red… back to empty again… wait we’re going downhill… ok, yeah we are on empty…. empty… empty… still empty.”

“You might think my negative outlook on life is inhibiting me somehow”

It’s amazing sometimes to think that we are related. I can’t even leave Burgess Hill unless I know that the car is at least half full with petrol. I’m careful. I guess it comes from anxiety. I just think ‘but if I drive when the tank is only quarter full then what happens if I reach the Pyecombe hill and find that I’ve used up all the gas and my car starts rolling down the hill, crashing into two cars and a pony??!!’ I say anxiety, maybe it’s pessimism.

Tasie isn’t like me. She’s the type to run through a wheat field with no shoes on, whilst I would stay at home
for fear of contaminating the bread supply for the whole of the South East. You might be thinking that my negative outlook on life is inhibiting me somehow. You are wrong. My life is brilliant because I am Signore Safety. If I’d driven us to Hobbycraft then the tank would be full and I wouldn’t have spent the entire journey gnawing on my hand with fear. It would have been lovely.

In case you were wondering, we did miraculously make it to Hobbycraft in the end… I still have no idea how… but I think my nervous energy gave the car an extra few miles.