More car trouble.

When I collected it on Saturday morning I felt it didn't pull too well in first but I just drove it home. Took it out yesterday for the first time since and had the same sensation. Coming back around 6pm from losing a few balls on Braids No. 1 it shook a bit and a wee picture of a spanner sprang up on the display accompanied by loud beeping and the text "Engine Fault".

This morning I should be en route to Inverary for April's wedding. Instead, after a restless night, I was at the garage before 8 o'clock demanding satisfaction (politely of course) since this cannot surely be the coincidental incidence of a fault just after it has left their hands.

If they don't fix it today, and they were not exactly optimistic about squeezing the job in, I'll have to hire a car or persuade the garage to lend me one and drive to Inverary tomorrow morning. No doubt the B&B will still want their money so this wedding looks like turning out to cost me more than my own did.

My car problem pales into insignificance however in comparison to David and Sally's.

They were en route to Barbansais on Sunday speeding along a Spanish motorway when one of their tyres went. The car left the carriageway and shot across the other one, turned on its side, ripped through a crash barrier and ended right way up in an oleander grove.

They stepped out essentially unhurt. Even their luggage was unhurt. Police and breakdown crew who attended regaled them with tales of recent fatalities and congratulated them on their astounding good fortune. Thanks to their membership of the Spanish equivalent of the RAC they were able to get back to Malaga where they are now keeping clear of cars for a while.

Their plans to spend August in France have been abandoned and Barbansais's fate is on hold again.