I’ve told you how a million times

The art of . . . EXAGGERATION

“Honestly,” I said to my wife, “It is that big.” She put her head in her hands to signify that this was a topic of conversation which surfaced far too often. “Why do you always have to exaggerate?” she wearily retorted, “You always have to claim that things are bigger than they really are.”

Unfortunately for me, she was right. It turned out the double bed would fit in the back of her car and I could indeed take it to the tip. I stood there shouting, “You’ll never get it in!” as she loaded it up but it was hard to deny that on this occasion at least, exaggeration had failed me, absolutely, completely and utterly beyond comprehension.

In a time-honoured fashion I was trying to use it to avoid work. It had always served me well. “We can’t redecorate, it’ll cost thousands.” “Re-tile the bathroom? That’s the biggest and most complicated job you’ve ever come up with.” Perhaps I was losing my touch.

Ironically, exaggeration is more commonly used by people who are trying to find work. CVs are littered with embellishments of the facts, some slight, some slightly ridiculous. “Were you really Apprentice of the Year for the whole of Europe?” Yes I was, and I came second for the Whole of the World.

If we’re honest, most of us will admit to exaggerating from time to time. When you’ve got a great story to tell, it’s hard to resist. It’s human nature to want your experiences to excite others as they have done you and exaggeration is a way of polishing up the details without stumbling into blatant lies. Slaying a dragon is OK but slaying a dragon as big as a house? Now that’s a claim to fame.

My wife says that men exaggerate much more than woman and she’s always right about absolutely everything. The pub is where a lot of it takes place and it’s usually in the name of being impressive. One bloke told me he was a lumberjack and reckoned he’d learned his trade in the Sahara forest. I said, don’t you mean the Sahara desert? He said, “Yeah, that’s what they call it now.”

There is a risk of course that you begin to exaggerate so much so that you’re doing it more than anyone else in history. Once you get a reputation for it, people will stop believing what you say even when you’re telling the truth. I’ve got a mate like that but he won’t listen. If I’ve told him once, I must have told him a million times. There’s just no helping some people.

Next week . . . The art of gardening