I am grateful to Past Me for buying a set of jump leads the last time (or possibly the time before that) she needed to get the RAC to come and start her car because the battery had gone flat in the garage.

I am grateful to our next-door neighbour, who was in her conservatory when I came back into the garden to tell T that the car wouldn't start and offered to come round and get her car out so we could jump-start mine (even if also a little weirded out by her saying to T that she hoped he knew what he was doing, as it was definitely a blue job rather than a pink job, as I was reading the instructions off the box the leads came in and working out what to attach where).

I am not grateful to our next-door neighbour's male partner, who then turned up and proceeded to try to tell everyone else what to do, despite his instructions contradicting the instructions on the jump leads, the instructions in the manual for my car and my memories of every time someone from a breakdown service has jump-started my car. Goodness knows what would actually have happened if I had attempted to start the car with the negative lead clamped to my battery instead of safely earthed, but fortunately I had the common sense not to do that, and eventually managed to persuade the neighbour that it would probably work better if she started her engine despite his insisting that she absolutely shouldn't do that. He had then managed to remove the leads before I even got out of the car again, even though all the instructions said to leave the leads on for a few minutes and then turn both engines off before removing them.

And after all that, by the time we'd driven to Witney it was clear that the weather was considerably showerier than the forecast had suggested, so instead of going for a walk we just went to Waitrose and then came home again, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a DPD van going through a long stretch of roadworks in Cassington.