Today, for the first time since early May, I drove to work with music playing. After about a month of faffing, Dension have finally got themselves in gear and shipped a replacement front panel to Car Audio Direct, who shipped it on to me in somewhere under 24 hours, and astonishingly it actually works – I was gloomily convinced that Dension's identification of the faulty part from my description of the symptoms would turn out to have been wrong.

Now all I have to do (apart from waiting a few days before I relax, in case it cuts out again immediately like last time) is to figure out how to get the wretched thing back into its slot in the dashboard. It goes in most of the way, but won't go in the last centimetre and lock into place properly. I think the cables behind it must be getting in the way, but I've been unable to discover the correct knack for tucking them into niches. I have a nasty feeling I'm going to have to go back to a professional car audio shop and look like an idiot asking them to do something so simple. And they'll probably charge me tens of pounds for it as well…

Still, it lifted my mood noticeably on a day which began with me getting out of bed and immediately groaning ‘oh god, I feel a Monday coming on’. After two months of absence, I'd pretty much got used to having no music in the car, and I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoy it when I do have it.