A trio -- or maybe that should be a triage after Eldest's trip to Casualty having been KO-ed by a football in the playground last week -- of events, this very day, all of which had a surreal air.

Item the first: lately the car's been trying, like the Knight Industries Two Thousand, to talk to us, flashing "Check Injection" on the display. Dropped it off with some chaps who know about that sort of stuff, pulled my two wheels out of the back, and headed off to work. Couldn't face the ring road so headed through town, past Halfords and up London Road about 8:30am. Even with my limited powers of observation, summat was clearly up, part of the road sealed off, and the PC advised me to go around.

That'll be the very same London Road you may well have seen on your televisual screens this evening providing a cold and frosty backdrop. Hey, Mr Reporter, get some gloves.

Item the second: nearing the car-fixy-place around 5:15pm, some bodily parts hot and some bodily parts not, was distracted by an unexpected noise from the Triangle Estate over the road -- the Match Of The Day theme tune being played by an ice cream van. I shook my head, but there it was, lit up and parked, presumably chocka with 99s. Look up the word "optimistic" in a pictorial dictionary and you'll see a thumbnail portrait of that van's driver.

Item the third: home in the warm at last, and The Boy shouts downstairs: Dad! Up I go, like Michael Portillo at Asda, happy to help. My friend George gave me a new car, he explains. Right, I say. And I've dropped it down the loo, he adds. OK, I nod. And I was sitting on the loo doing a ... I'll spare you the details here.

A glove was donned, there was an indelicate retrieval operation, quickly followed by some furious rinsing. Vehicle jet-washed and safely returned to its (less than careful) owner.