Just over a week ago I went to open the boot of the car and it didn’t respond. No sound of the catch being released and no way to open it. The timing wasn’t great, not only because of the looming special Bank Holiday weekend for the Jubilee but also because we were due to drive a load of boxes up to Magnus in Wales. In the end, we loaded through the side doors (amazingly, it all fitted perfectly) and unloaded that way at the other end. That trick doesn’t work with a double bass though so I had to walk my upright down to church over the weekend for Sunday lunchtime’s jazz gig.

I called up the local Skoda specialists on Monday and took the car in today. It turns out that it wasn’t the catch unit but a broken wire. That was still quite expensive as it took a bit of extra labour to diagnose and fit but saved the cost of the spare part at least. Possibly I could have done it myself but I wasn’t sure that if I followed the apparent trick to open the catch manually that I would be able to get it shut again (and I probably would have wasted time ordering a spare catch which I would then have been stuck with).

Never mind – all is done now and I can revel in the wonders of being able to load things directly into the boot once more.