The rising cost of fool

Whilst we were in California we were always happy to spend our dollars on fuel as it seemed such a bargain compared with what we pay at home.
A tank full never cost us more than $50 whereas we pay through the nose for our fool over here.
I'd better explain the discrepancy in my spelling before we go too far and that might help you understand the title of todays blog.
We (that's Val, me and half the Smiffs) were born in a village called Burwell which is in an area of England called East Anglia that is quite rural and has a very distinctive dialect. (I get very annoyed when an actor is attempting to play an East Anglian person and just uses a generic country accent. The 3 counties of East Anglia, Suffolk, Norfolk and our own Cambridgeshire have a quite distinctive accent and in fact each county has a slightly different dialect).
One of the characteristics of the dialect is a tendancy to blur vowels with a mellow 'oo' sound. (Particularly soo in Norfolk).
Hence fuel comes out somewhat like fool and my own particular bete noir, Newmarket sounds more like Noomarkut. (I have lived away from there for over 40 years and it still the old oohs slip out).
Anyway, back to the fool.
The other day I went to the filling station for more of the stuff for only my second visit since we returned. I stuck the nozzle into the tank and started pumping. I got 22 litres in before I suddenly came back to (English) earth with a bump realising that I had just poured in unleaded petrol instead of the diesel that my car has a preference for. Oops!
I went in to the checkout and told them of my plight and said that I was going to carry on filling with diesel, working on the theory that I would dilute the fool to a 2:1 ratio of diesel to gasoline.
"You can't do that" cried the guy behind me. "It'll ruin your engine". He then identified himself as a Honda mechanic, so I took his word for it.
I called out my breakdown service and they duly arrived and took me to a local garage whose mechanics pumped out the gas, replaced it with 3 gallons of diesel and charged me £105 for the pleasure. They kept the 5 gallon mix of gas/diesel that they had removed, no doubt to separate and use later.
I then went back to the filling station and topped up with diesel.
The first abortive top up had cost £25 and my second visit cost me £39.
In all a costly mistake at £169 0r $340.
Now you can probably understand today's title more readily.

As a postscript, I was topping up as we were off to do a bit of dog-sitting for my son whilst they were up in East Anglia making final arrangements to move to our home village.
When I told him about my idiocy/misfortune he said that it was a fallacy and that he had seen a recent TV program where they had quite successfully run a diesel car on gasoline and vise versa. Was I miffed, as that had been my original intention.

BTW It appears that I am now part of an official national statisitic. Apparently I can share my idiocy with 399 other souls who make the same mistake daily.
My excuse is that I had gaily pumped gasoline in California for the preceding 9 weeks and just forgot where I was for the moment.
I've no idea what excuse the other 399 idiots use when they do it every day. You'd think they'd learn a lesson.