"Petrol’s the one thing I resent spending money on"

I’M FLYING to London at 9.30pm.

This morning, my friend Marie offered to drive me to the airport. It is now 7.50pm, and I’m standing outside my house, giving her offer the kind of careful consideration I should have given it when she made it — so that I might have answered, with great conviction: “No. Thank you Marie, but I will drive my own getaway car.”

I’m playing an unusually tense game of “I Spy” with myself, meanwhile. Hoping that any second, I’ll spy, with my little eye, something beginning with “M”: Marie. Or “V”: Volkswagen. Or... hmmm... let’s see... for I’ve plenty of time... “H”: Holly, her dog, yapping in her lap.