I use the word “disproportionately” a lot, or so it seems to me. A search for the word on this Blog shows that it has only appeared in 10 of the 1,000+ posts published so far, a disproportionately small percentage: 99.9% of the posts do not contain it at all, and this is the first time I have typed the word here for nearly three years.  

The word came to mind last Friday to describe how I felt when my car passed its MOT with almost no work required. There was a single bulb that needed replacing (they charged £10) and that was it. I was disproportionately pleased about this. I drove home just as it was getting dark, happier and more relieved than I have felt for quite some time.  

Between June and September of this year I published a few pieces documenting how long it took to get the car serviced while the garage was waiting for a new part, concluding with this one. It includes a chronology of the 13 weeks that we were without our 13-year-old Peugeot and were provided with a replacement vehicle for almost the entire time. I didn’t mention it in that final piece, but I was disproportionately pleased to be reunited with my car, running more smoothly than it had done for several months.  

There are times when I am disproportionately irritated by something trivial. If I think hard enough I can probably give you a few examples, but I’ll continue to “accentuate the positive”, and repeat just how pleased I was by the straightforward business of my car passing its MOT last week: disproportionately so.