Not much on top

It's not hard to know when Francis is almost home. For starters, there's the sound of the car engine, a friendly chug chug, rising to a slightly asthmatic 'chug-cough-chug,' when he puts his foot down for the last 100 yards to try to give our neighbourhood slugs a run for their money, and usually loses.

The sound is a reminder of more innocent times when climate change and morbid obesity weren't natural word partners, and the doomsday scenario that exercised us all was the Millennium Bug - remember how it was going to cause global meltdown? Computers round the world would all fail to recognise the year '2000' and go mad, automatically sending Danielle Steel's entire back catalogue in triplicate from Amazon to everyone on your Christmas card list except in nuclear bunkers, where warheads would be dispatched instead, though with optional gift-wrapping.

Sweetly, perhaps, we all believed that the cancer generated by diesel fuel was of a nicer, kinder, slower-acting kind than the robust 'kill you as soon as look at you' petrol powered sort.

So, taking advantage of the cancer-lite lower duty, my parents bought an old saloon, drove it and then, shortly afterwards, died. Given that Francis inherited the car, it would be nice to think that it was in no way responsible for their deaths, but only time will tell.

This evening, though, there's no friendly panting as the barely out of breath slugs hurl themselves through the letterbox and celebrate their victory with a quick gnaw on the underlay - the signal to me to snort that last line of cocaine, hide the lover under the stairs and get the children lined up in order of cleanliness - often right way up - by the front door.

The first I know of Francis' arrival is a long, low roar and a throbbing vibration that shakes the house to its foundations, rather excitingly, then stops abruptly. I open the front door. Francis is sitting outside the house in a car that echoes his male-pattern baldness but takes it several stages further by having absolutely nothing on top at all.

He is sitting behind the steering wheel, a look of beautific happiness on his face, paying me no attention at all.

"Like it?" he asks, when I've finally brought him out of his testosterone-fuelled trance by dashing a glass of water in his face.

"What's happened to the old car?" I ask. "Is this yours?"

"No," he says, with evident regret. "One of the directors left last year and it needed driving around a bit so they let me borrow it for the weekend. It's a convertible. And look at all the extras. Heated bum-warmers, sat-nav, heated bum warmers, fabulous sound system, heated bum warmers, and a roof that goes up and down. Watch this."

He presses a button. Nothing happens.

"That's funny," he says. "It's supposed to go up automatically."

He presses it again. The roof stays obstinately down.

"Never mind," he says, almost nonchalantly. "I'll try again later."

"Francis," I say, "It's started to rain."

Two hours later, we've used the last of the bin liners, sellotaped together to create a makeshift roof or, depending on your perspective, an art installation which sweepingly conveys the deep insecurities of a generation ruled by its possessions.

The rain is gradually dripping into the car while we wait for the man with a special wrench to arrive and raise the roof manually. Then there's a small explosion from the dashboard.

"There go the heated bum warmers," says Francis, gloomily. "Rain's got into the electrics."

"Never mind," I say.

"I know it's telling me that it's pathetic for a man of my age to be driving something like this, and that it makes me look like a total w***** , and that I should just be grateful to have a car at all, even it if is 12 years old and only capable of keeping up with a hearse, but it is wonderful to drive."

We link arms and stand together in the rain, a mid-life couple watching a mid-life dream fill slowly up with water.