I promised you the fully Monty on my lost weekend, never realising that I would need to add the word Python.

One of our party ended up on the wrong side of the law.  Yes, yes, thank you hecklers.  We always knew it was a possibility but not before we’d actually started.  Impressive, even by our extremely demanding standards of misbehaviour.  Bugsy (Origin of name lost in the long jump sandpit – probably an incurable nit issue back in the day) was caught speeding in a manner that brings Jeremy Clarkson to mind, doing no less than 34 mph in a 30 mph zone.  The disgrace of it.  If you’re going to speed, at least do it properly, preferably something that would rate a headline in The Hastings and St Leonard’s Gazette. “Ninety mile per hour  madness of petrol-head pensioner” would surely have been less shaming?

That a gel from our school should have been caught have done something so ordinary!  But redemption was at hand.  Arriving back from her session at Naughty Drivers School she confessed that the whole experience had been so nerve-wracking that on the return journey she had driven into a street which was a dual carriageway travelling towards her.

Nothing else would suffice but an immediate outing to the most recent scene of her motoring misdemeanours.  We drove her round the route several times, pointing out the No Entry signs, the road markings, the cars all travelling in one direction only and most importantly, the cameras.  Valuable time, paper and ink were wasted whilst she tried to concoct a story about having been reversing down the street.  Sentencing guidelines were consulted and the remote possibility of inventing plausible mitigation considered and dismissed.

Further evidence for the prosecution came to light when we checked her workbook from the course and discovered that by page 2 she had started to make a shopping list. This, Madam, was precisely why you ended up doing O Level Cookery when we did Latin.

I was naturally in favour of her going straight to jail without collecting £200 (To pay the fine) but instead we retired to the pub to discuss the options and further impress upon her the depth of her criminality.  (Much) later we took a taxi home, again via the one way system and interrogated the driver on his knowledge of signage.  Further examination on speed limits compliance revealed that taxi driving was yet another in the seemingly unending list of careers from which she was debarred.

Readers, we drank to forget and with a vigour that had most certainly not been shown on the driving course.  I returned to London on Tuesday evening, a husk of the woman who had set off with such low hopes.

The good news was the Brothers Karamatzov were off to Athens for a week, giving me a much needed opportunity to recover.  The bad news was that they needed to be driven to the airport at 5.00am the next morning. And on the right side of the road.