Caught in a perfect storm

I’ve got one of those cars that, if you start it and move it a couple of metres, the next time you start it – it won’t start. Who knew? As far as I could tell, it was yet another dead-battery situation, even though I’ve just replaced the old one. So when I rang the AA and got a voice asking for my particulars, after each particular, the operator responded by saying, ‘‘Perfect’’, as if I had uttered something truly wondrous rather than the mundane.

At the end of the spiel, he asked me if I wanted to ask him anything, and I cheekily said, ‘‘As a matter of fact, I do.’’ I said I couldn’t help but notice that he’d said the word perfect about a dozen times, politely suggesting he might try some other rejoinders, to which he apologised, saying he had employed the perfect word because he’d been told off for saying ‘‘cool’’.

I offered some other responses such as great, fantastic, fabulous, or ‘‘Love it!’’, realising as soon as I’d said them that they were over-egging it a bit and, to use the ghastly i-word, were ‘‘inappropriate’’. But after finishing our goodnatured exchange, I wished I’d offered up the sentence-concluding ‘‘Roger, copy that’’, or ‘‘10-4, rubber ducky’’.

Seriously, though, people are using ‘‘perfect’’ way too much. It’s the new ‘‘awesome’’, which is no longer cool usage, while ‘‘cool’’ has been round since the invention of the beatnik and still seems to be in, if ‘‘in’’ is still in.

I suppose it’s all a matter of context. He could have just said ‘‘OK’’ to each of my responses, or a simple ‘‘Thanks’’.

And then I found myself starting to use the ubiquitous ‘‘perfect’’ as I watched a BBC piece about Peta, a German animal rights activist group objecting to a play, which has been taking place since the 17th century, about the last days of Christ in which Our Lord rides into town on a donkey.

Peta called for the donkey to be swapped with an e-scooter on the grounds that it was cruel to use animals in a play. ‘‘Oh, that’s just bloody perfect!’’ I cried out sarcastically. This really was a matter of context, because we saw the actors dressed in historically appropriate long robes, which would’ve been a health hazard on an e-scooter and would, no doubt, have drawn concerns from German health and safety organisations.

And if Christ was whizzing about on an e-scooter, there would also be howls of outrage from environmental groups questioning his carbon footprint and the amount of electricity used to propel the Messiah about the stage.

And what of the feelings of the poor donkey? It probably looks forward all year to making a cameo appearance in the play, not to mention the hurt feelings of his fellow brethren donkeys, which rock up, along with all creatures great and small, at harvest festival time to queue in a church for a St Francis of Assisi blessing? Should they too be expelled from interior dwellings because their presence has been reframed through a modern perspective?

If they must make the donkey redundant, then the individualistic, joyriding e-scooter should be replaced by that great leveller, public transport. Christ could be depicted riding the bus, happily shooting the breeze with commuters and giving up his seat to the halt and the lame.

If there is any pony to be employed for the transport of the prophet, then surely it should be Shanks’ pony, meaning the actor could walk into town on his pins. That simple act of propulsion could hardly cause offence to any naysayer, and would be quite awesome, cool and, like, really perfect.