TRAVEL TIPS: No. 1

If ever you should suffer a, shall we say, agricultural diversion when attempting to steer with your knee while rolling a cigarette, it would be wise to ensure that you are driving a Trabant at the time.

I was just performing said manouevre when a sudden jolt and the sight of tobacco parting company with paper caused me to look up and witness the perfect point perspective of a ploughed field which, on a closer inspection, I discovered to be some metre and a half below the level of and, on the other side of the road from, the lane from which I began said escapade.

Trabant...chassis like a tank and with limited moving parts, none of which could remotely be described as fragile...completely undamaged, an assumption at the time but confirmed on later inspection. I just rammed it into first...bumpity bumpity bump...tractor exit, back onto the blacktop and...now, where did I put those cigarette papers?

The moral of the story is...next time I'll take the Octavia. Much less of a tendency to veer.