A bag of Monster Munch declares the spirit of the age

‘Nice car,’ said my host approvingly, as he saw me off after Sunday lunch last weekend, as the blossom hung heavy on the bough and all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire chorused in the sunshine.

I opened the door with pride. At this point I should boast that the vehicle in question is not some hybrid, some gleaming marque of prestige. It’s my husband’s R-reg VW Passat. I swept the litter off the seat on to the floor with a fine, careless gesture before taking the wheel and accepting the compliment with a smile. The car’s air conditioning is broken, it has many more miles on the clock than Madonna, and it has a sudden tendency to cut out like Devon Loch in the final furlong of the Grand National — in fact, you couldn’t pay someone to tow it away, but none of this matters. All this makes the old Passat, as Vogue cover lines like to say, ‘right for now’.