An hour of intuition

A volunteer friend of mine at the hospital is the proud owner of a lemon. That is to say that her car is a lemon coloured Holden Barina. It's not a colour I would go for but she likes it and as it's her car that's all that matters. She purchased it virtually at first sight last summer and naturally the clock was set to summer time. Summer time ended three weeks ago but at lunch today she casually mentioned that she has been unable to adjust the clock to standard time.

'Would you like me to have a go at changing the clock?', I asked. 'Yes, if you have the time', she responded ironically and following a short but noticeable hesitation. Immediately I realised she was not entirely comfortable with the suggestion. That probably was because I had spent the preceding fifteen minutes regaling her with stories about my total inability to get the dishwasher I inherited with my new apartment to work despite extensive word by word scrutiny of the manual. What sounded funny to her in the context of my difficulties no doubt sounded of dubious worth in the context of hers. But we were both now locked into my offer of assistance.

Tentatively, on both our parts, we made our way into the bowels of the hospital's car park and found her lemon. Do you know how bright an almost toy sized lemon coloured car looks when parked amongst the large, austere, silver grey or dazzlingly black luxury cars owned by the doctors? No I didn't either but I do now.

I took to the passenger's seat and gave a moment's thought as to how I would attack the problem. Let me state, at this point, if you own a Holden Barina and want to adjust the clock you better hope your intuition is in working order.

First, I did the unthinkable for a man and consulted the car's manual. Do you know that the word 'clock' is not mentioned in the long list of contents? Eventually I found an item entitled something like 'information panel' and turned to that entry on Page 48 of the manual. Bingo. It was the entry for the radio/CD/clock panel on the dashboard. The entry was a line drawing of the panel. In the drawing the unit was shown as turned off so nothing was displayed. Mmm, not so helpful really for understanding its workings. Also unhelpful was the fact that none of the control buttons in the drawing was named. Most unhelpful of all the item in the manual contained no narrative whatsoever describing or commenting on the panel. Not one word.

Looking at the panel itself I found the Tune button also said Menu. Right, I thought, this should be easy from here but no matter what I pressed or turned on that button all I could bring up was a variety of options for playing CDs. Minutes passed and I could sense my friend squirming in her driver's seat beside me. Clearly she couldn't wait for me to concede defeat and bugger the incorrectly timed clock.

I can be very stubborn at times. Correction, I am very stubborn, full stop. I kept gazing at the panel, seeing nothing. And then I saw it. A tiny, really tiny, circle on one of the buttons with one right angle inside it signalling the nine o'clock handles. 'A clock', I cried out in triumph. 'Where does it say that?', my friend enquired. 'It doesn't', I said 'but surely that is what the symbol denotes'. It did.

From that point it was easy-peasey to adjust the clock, needing only a few more guesses and as many minutes to work out when to press the buttons and when to turn them so that my changes to the time could be saved. I'd done it! My male pride was intact.

I'm sure my friend was grateful for my assistance. Her words said she would consult me when it came time to turn the clock forward again at the re-start of daylight saving but her action in driving off like a Formula 1 drive suggested she felt that she'd had a narrow escape.