comedy of errors: a folded rag | thearticle

My wife, Marianne, and I arrived on these shores in November 1956, not long after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution. This story starts two years later. We were feeling flush. We had

just bought a car (on hire purchase of course): a new Austin A35, registration number 9313 NO. It was green, pea-green, the same colour that the Owl and the Pussycat chose for their boat.

For us, the car was not just a status symbol, as our friends back in Hungary surmised. We really needed a car at this stage, both morning and evening. We lived in Harlow, Essex, where I

worked in the British Research Lab of IT&T. Marianne, however, worked at Yardley’s in the East End of London, and relied on a friend who worked nearby to drive her. She also attended

evening classes twice a week at the South West Essex Technical College Walthamstow. The course was run by the Royal Institution of Chemistry, and qualifying would enable her to become a

Member of the Society. Marianne needed this British qualification because her third year of studies at the Technical University of Budapest had been rudely interrupted by the Russian

invasion. Our routine for that year was that every Tuesday and Friday I would drive to Walthamstow to pick Marianne up at about 8 p.m. On one of those days I appeared on time, parked the car

in the car park and walked to the bench where we always met. Marianne was a little late, held up by something or other. “Where did you park?” she asked when she arrived. “At the other side

of the car park. Our usual place was occupied,” I explained. So we walked to the spot where I had left the car. It might have been a walk of about 100 yards. The car park had no lights. The

weather was miserable. And we just could not find our car. “Have you forgotten where you parked again?” Marianne asked me, despairingly,  “I’m too tired. You find the car while I wait at our

bench. OK?”  I replied that I wouldn’t be long. Indeed it took me only a few more minutes to find the car. It was, of course, not where I remembered leaving it. Nonetheless, we were finally

on our way home. We may have been halfway to Harlow when it started to rain. Copiously. The rear window had to be wiped. I stopped. I got out of the car. The rag we always used for this

purpose was in the glove box, nicely folded. It was not our custom to nicely fold anything, not even my shirts. So what did that herald? It was a mystery. When Marianne looked at the cloth

more closely, the mystery deepened. “This is not our rag,” she said. And then I had a look at the number plate. It was not our car! I had used my key to open someone else’s car. So what

should we do? We were obviously in danger. The car we drove might have already been reported stolen. We could have been arrested at any time. I could see the headlines of tomorrow’s

tabloids: “YOUNG REFUGEE COUPLE STEAL CAR.” One thing was certain. We had to drive back to the Technical College. Quickly. Now another kind of danger loomed. If the owner spotted us driving

his car, he might resort to violence to stop us. Luckily we arrived without incident. We quickly got out of the car, took our seats on the bench and tried to look as innocent as possible.

Nobody would have thought that only minutes before we were engaged in criminal activity. We waited and waited. A good hour later, a middle aged couple appeared. The man, car-key in hand, 

admonished his companion: “You see: this is where I parked the car!” Before he had a chance to put his key in the lock, I stood up. In my heavily accented English I proclaimed: “Very sorry,

Sir, I am truly sorry, we have been driving your car.” There was a moment of silence. He was unable to appreciate what might have happened. “You-broke-in-to-my-car?” he said very slowly,

emphasising every syllable, “Did you break the lock?” “No, Sir, sorry Sir, let me explain. I don’t know what happened either, but I can tell you my theory. You and I, Sir, may have been

victims of a brazen cost-cutting attempt. The car manufacturers must have had a huge stock of unused locks somewhere, and decided to put them all into pea-green A35 models. All the buyers of

pea-green cars received identical keys that fitted into identical locks.” After this brief lecture explaining the situation, I demonstrated what my theory had led to in practice. I took my

car-key from my pocket, put it in his lock, and opened and closed the car. With the smile of an accomplished fair-ground actor I announced: “Voila, here we are”. The man was flabbergasted (I

think his imagination was rather limited). He accepted my apology, opened his car with his key, and drove away. We never saw them again. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only

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