With my sister J at the wheel of the Fiat Panda, we turned off the main road and drove past a country pub packed with Eton schoolboys dressed in their school uniform. They couldn’t take their eyes off A, next to me on the back seat.

I asked to be dropped off so that I could take a short walk, and J agreed to pick me up again in a few minutes. True to her word, she soon found me again, but now she was driving a vintage sports car. “Don’t worry”, she assured me. “I haven’t stolen this. I have just done a car swap with a Swedish lady. She’ll be along in a few minutes to pick you up. We’ll swap vehicles back again in Oban”.

My lift arrived as predicted. I made for the passenger door on the left of the car only to discover that this had now moved to the right, presumably to satisfy the needs the four-person Swedish party. Once inside the car, I settled into my seat, and the driver did her best to make me feel at home by slotting a Police greatest hits CD into the player.

Before long I had taken over the driving – even though I had consumed two bottles of white wine earlier in the day. I misjudged the handling of a small car crammed with five people and crashed into several other vehicles parked along the Oban seafront.

Not long afterwards I was bombing down the motorway with my long-dead paternal grandmother as co-pilot. Again, I had very little control of the car, and was weaving all over the place. A further accident was inevitable. I wondered how I could explain yet another claim to my insurer?