Spare parts didn’t spare my blushes

Many years ago, I was lucky enough to be sponsored by my employer to spend a year at Cambridge University on an engineering study course. Cambridge being Cambridge, we had regular talks by the very best from the world of engineering and science, including, for example, the astronaut John Glenn, the first american to orbit the Earth. One day, we were tidying up our lecture room for a talk from another visitor. I tucked under a table some prematurely worn-out suspension parts that had just been taken from my lowmileage MG 1100 car and which I didn’t want to inflict upon my landlady. Our visiting speaker duly arrived and, to my horror, I saw it was Dr alex Moulton, the internationally acclaimed engineer and designer of the Hydrolastic suspension fitted to thousands of cars, including my MG 1100! I don’t know how it happened, but Dr Moulton caught his foot on a protruding bit of the worn suspension parts under the table and the whole sorry lot was revealed to the room. Chaos then prevailed, with me red-faced and protesting that the whole thing was a terrible coincidence and not a deliberate slight. Poor, kind Dr Moulton at one point even reached for his cheque book! Eventually, to my relief, everything calmed down. My apologies were accepted and the scholastic calm of Cambridge was restored. David Cowlishaw,

Alton, Hants.