It got worse – The car, my fabulous friend and reliable wagon cut out. The engine stopped and every light on the dashboard flashed a new alarming colour of red or orange. Shit. This was a knee trembler like no other, I had to decide to either abandon the children and fend for myself (I considered this to be the best option) or try and get the car out of this ridiculous mess. The radio sparked into life with that prick Derrick who was a safe distance behind some watching and laughing at me “Fair dinkum Cobber you’ve got yourself in a right strewth there mate” or something helpful like that. Archie started to cry, Jack fell asleep and the dog threw up all over the back seat, again.

If you have ever held onto the seat of a car by your bum cheeks you will appreciate it to be quite an unrelaxing pose, and it doesn’t lend itself to rational thought. So it took longer than I would have liked to realise I should simply try and restart the car rather than flail around wildly pushing buttons and pulling levers, as it was likely to have simply been a safety mechanism shutting itself down to prevent cracking my pistons. Sure enough, the little Paj sparked into life, bubbling away half-submerged beneath the water and after some highly skilled burying of my right foot, we fired out of the water like a cork onto harder ground.

The remainder of our journey back to the tarmac was uneventful but very alone, as we were rightly abandoned by our team in favour of a safer less idiotic route.

Well, at least I didn’t bend my wheel rims jumping off a sand dune. But that’s another story….

In other news I got a new hat, which I love, so you’ll be seeing some more of it.