Ten for the road

Back in November, I wrote about the sad death of my old VW Passat on the way down to Dorset. It was gloomily pronounced on all sides to be irreparable, and the poor old thing languished in the car park outside Netherbury Village Hall before Andy, the local garage man, managed to dispose of it for, as he put it, ‘the price of a drink’. With 127,000 miles on the clock I could hardly complain. Until its death rattle at the midnight hour on the A303, it had been a good and faithful servant.

I now have a new car, another Passat, for we Spencers are creatures of habit, though I checked in the Top Gear magazine, and the model I’ve chosen received a glowing four-star review. It’s strangely reassuring to think you have a bruiser like Jeremy Clarkson on your side, not to mention the plucky chap who survived that dreadful high-speed accident.