When I called Jane yesterday lunchtime to find out what time she would pick me up from church, it turned out she had a problem with the car. Her key fob wasn’t working and she couldn’t get into the car. I quickly walked home and cycled up to the Outwoods, where the car was parked (a foolhardy move – some of the hills almost killed me and I discovered I need to do some bike maintenance to get down to the lowest gears!).

It turned out that my fob also failed – one flash of the lights and then nothing. We ended up calling out the AA. We’ve been members for years and I can’t remember the last time we had to make a call out so I think they are still quids in. It turned out that the car battery had got a bit flat although the testing they could do indicated it was still in a decent condition.

We can access the car using the key (the key hole was hidden under a bit of trim). The main challenge is that, with both key fobs having lost their connection, the alarm goes off between when we open the door and turn on the ignition, which isn’t ideal. We’ve got it booked in at our local Skoda specialist garage on Monday morning. I expect it will be time for a new battery (the existing one must be 6-7 years old) and they should be able to reconnect the key fobs too.

In the meanwhile, we’ll just have to put up with a couple of seconds of noise and a sense of jeopardy every time we take the car out.