The fuel light was already on when I started the engine last night. Normally that’s just an early warning but I was in my 500 Twinair which has a small tank and, contra to the official figures, a propensity to do 39mpg everywhere.

The sensible thing would have been to stop and fill up rather than plugging on home but it was bloody freezing outside with a biting, icy wind that could strip the clackers from a tungsten monkey. The last thing any sane man would do is stand willingly on the same spot for five minutes listening to a stream of unleaded piddling into the side of his little Fiat. 

Filling up is a tedious business at the best of times; when it’s cold and dark and a Siberian hurricane is whipping across the forecourt, it’s hard to think of anything less fun. 

Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. Petrol pumps in the United States have a latch on the trigger that lets you lock it into position once the nozzle is plugged into your car’s fuel hole. It’s an ingenious system since it allows you to set the pump running and then get back into the car where it’s warm and there are sweets. 

Gosh, you’re thinking, that sounds unbelievably dangerous. American gas stations must be home to a constant festival of wildly arcing fuel spray and thunderously massive explosions, like the end of the car chase in Bullitt mixed with that scene from Zoolander. But they aren't. I’ve never seen a refuelling mishap at a petrol station over there and, if the state of California is neurotic enough to put signs warning of ‘chemicals that can cause birth defects’ at the entrances to bars, you can be certain they've deemed this fuel hose thing safe. 

Why wouldn’t it be? The pump cuts off if the nozzle slips from the car and when the tank is full the trigger snaps shut, just as it does in the UK. Except over here, that trigger is needlessly held open by some poor sap freezing his face off.