I GOT quite a shock the other morning when someone suddenly hurled their upper body onto the bonnet of my car.
Fortunately, I wasn't moving.
In fact, I was at a petrol station and the face of the panic-stricken Asian man who had grabbed hold of my car seemed familiar.
No wonder.
He had just served me inside the petrol station itself.
Since I was about to drive off, I had already switched on the engine.
Now I switched it off again and wound down my window to inquire what on earth the matter was.
Peeling himself off my car with a look of relief on his face, he apologised and said he had forgotten to charge me for the petrol on my cash card - about £25's worth, I recall.
It turned out he had mistakenly only charged me for a newspaper, hence his sudden sprint to stop my car.
So I had to go back inside the petrol station, take out my card again, and go through the whole payment system once more.
At first I was irritated.
But later I felt grateful to him because I hadn't bothered to check my receipt myself.
If his mistake had been in the opposite direction, I could well have been charged way too much and never known about it until it was too late to query it.
So, thanks to his blunder, a small but vital lesson was learnt...ie, I should check all receipts immediately.