You Know You Are Tired When ...

This morning, I had need to visit the tip (dump, place to discard ones unwanted detritus). So, I loaded the car with a whole manner of bags and dead things turned on my music and drove off. Excellent. It was not yet 9am, so a productive day was in the offing. 

Well, the thing is, the music got too loud even for my grunt-like tastes, so I turned it down. The windows of the car were open for two reasons - first, because it is muggy and warm, and the second being the irrational sense that if I have brought a spider in with me, it will cast itself out of the window and not climb on me. With the windows open, vile obnoxious heavy metal is perhaps a little much when it spews forth from  passing car, and I am a decent sort of man. So I turned the music down, as any nice person would.

Only when I turned the knob, the volume remained at the 7000 decibels that it was currently enjoying. I turned the volume button again - nothing. The next song was due any moment and to the best of my failing knowledge, had some rude words (like such music does from time to time) and as a familiar face, really needed the din to not be detected by the lovely folk of Aylesbury. But the volume would not turn down.

So I whacked the button to silence Mr Zombie before his next phase of invective - but to no avail. He had possessed my stereo for it didn't fall silent. Not good; not good at all. So, I hurriedly pulled over so I could sort this issue out. Add to this the ever present stress of advancing spiders, and you might imagine that I was in a little bit of a tizzy.

Well, push the button as I might, over and over, the bawling American bawled and the Axe-wielding geezer wielded on. The music would not stop. The lights did as I wanted when the buttons were pressed - they flicked on and they flicked off. So what was I doing wrong? I bent down to look at the fuses to see if an issue existed there, but they all look alike to me, so I abandoned that notion. I turned off the engine and removed the key - still no silence. I began the curse this four-piece rock combo.

What to do? The key was out of the ignition, the button on the stereo refused to work, the caterwauling crooner was getting more and more irate and his lyrics reflected that fact. The spiders were coming, and I needed to get the car back so that Mrs Acular and Twins Aculae could toddle off and see friends. I was going to make them late ... 

Until it occurred to me that I was wearing my iPod and the music was courtesy of my nice earphones.