I know it’s of less interest, as it’s a car, but for anyone curious, we did replace Number Two Son’s appalling written-off Citroen with a cheap but solid VW Polo. It’s low mileage but reasonably elderly, though that has its advantages: cheap to insure, it’s a lot of car for the money and, more importantly, it’s made of solid materials. Plus of course it’s too old to be an emissions hazard.

We let Hogsback Harry, terror of the builders’ merchants, do the haggling and he managed to get £250 knocked off the price – which on a cheap car is good going. Even after I insisted we get him a decent bottle of Scotch, that had still saved N2S nearly £200. I think we may have to take Harry with us when looking for bikes with Number One Son… Come to think of it, I wish I’d taken him with me when I was buying the GTR!

Dex