New car

On Thursday we took delivery of a new car - a Skoda Roomster with 5 seats, 5 doors, a glass roof and a zippy 1.9 litre diesel engine. With the rear seats folded forward the carrying space is enormous (see photo) and can be made even bigger by removing these seats altogether, an operation which takes just a minute or so. Already we have carried 8 staging pieces and 8 boxes of stage lights in it for the Youth Theatre. In many ways we were sorry to part with our old Volvo car which has served us faithfully for the last 12 years. Its taken us 132,000 miles through England, Wales, Scotland and France, many of them towing a caravan or trailer. But the time had come for it to go - before the Government Scrappage Scheme ends on 31 March.