shewhomust | Courtesy and cousins

Our car is currently at the garage, who are repairing the dent made in it by someone taking the hill too fast one frosty morning. It isn't a very large dent, not as substantial as the damage done in the same incident to our next door neighbour's car, which was parked on the other side of the road, but the car is at the garage for ten days, and in the interim we have a courtesy car. It's a Peugeot 2008, which is apparently some sort of SUV crossover, and it's very fancy. The lights come on automatically when it gets dark, and the windscreen wipers start automatically when it rains. On the other hand, there are things we would have expected it to adjust automatically, which we can work out how to correct: it expresses speeds in kilometres per hour, and thinks it is an hour later than it is.

We drove it to Sunderland last night, to dine with my cousins, who were up for the match (its satnav doesn't know about the new Northern Spire bridge). We met them at Gabriele's, which has become our regular Italian restaurant on Seaburn sea front, for a very happy evening. Sunderland had won 2 - 0, and we are not accustomed to winning: there is an upside to being demoted (twice). Also discussed: family, books, music, holiday plans, the superiority of the first bottle of wine - the last in stock - to those which followed...