Well, I've been saying I need a new car for some months now, and this week it's actually started to look likely that I might acquire one soon. Having test-driven a bunch of possibilities and decided which one I liked best, I've been telling everyone I was after a VW Polo, and therefore it makes obvious and perfect sense that yesterday I should have put a deposit down on a Renault Clio.

This is because nobody actually seemed to have any second-hand Polos of the kind I was after (5-door with half-decent engine); at least none that weren't apparently selling like hot cakes. I counted three that were brought to my attention by the local VW dealer and turned out to have been sold already by the time they phoned me back. On the other hand, when I made an exploratory pass through Newmarket, a couple of identical-looking 5-door Clios caught my eye on the forecourt of Wests, and after a test drive and some thought I decided that one of those would be just as plausible a replacement for battered old Arthur as a Polo would, particularly since the Clio's slightly smaller size might make it that much less likely to have arguments with my somewhat contorted driveway.

So, ooh, goodness. If all goes to plan, then by the time I go back to work in a week and a half I'll be going in a different car. That's slightly scary.

In the course of the car-buying process and getting the RAC in to have a look at the prospective purchase, I've had occasion to practise my radio alphabet quite a lot, since the RAC needed the registration and chassis numbers, everyone needed everyone else's postcode, and as usual nobody could spell my name.

There was one particularly confusing bit where I used the word ‘Peru’ for P, and it was misheard as the digit 2. That struck me as odd, since I thought the whole point of radio alphabets was that they were designed so that sort of mishearing just didn't happen. Of course, the fault turned out to be mine, since the standard NATO radio alphabet uses ‘Papa’ for P. So why could I have sworn it was ‘Peru’?

I've only just worked it out. I bet I was thinking of Peru because the radio-alphabet for L is ‘Lima’. D'oh!