“It’s your cam belt”, he said slamming the bonnet down.

At that moment the sun dipped behind the trees in the lorry park just off the motorway and I felt my bank account drop into the red.

Up until then it had been a really nice day. Sunny and hot at the seaside for an October day, the cafe was packed with people enjoying the weather and eating out. I’d walked up to the next town and wandered back to the car before heading home.

Not even the sudden lurch and lack of power phased me - after all it had happened before with the Golf. But this wasn’t simply electrical and it was the same thing which wrote off Martin’s car.

I watched him unfold the towing dolly from the back of the van, load the car onto it and off we set to my local Alfa dealer to unload it, push it up to their barrier and head back into the town to drop me off.

Luckily we made good time and I only missed the first few numbers at tonight’s Kate Rusby concert. It was the last one in a long tour which she had to suspend at one point due to a bad cold. It’s been a long year for her what with deaths in her family, divorce and the challenge of producing her first album and that strain showed a little tonight.

Loosing one’s partner, producer and band member of twelve years standing isn’t easy and having to do that in front of a theatre full of people makes it all that much harder but we all said farewell to John McCusker and wished him well.

It’s been an odd day but I’m not a Bitter Boy.