YOUR call is important to us. It's so important that we are now going to place you in a very long queue and ignore you for half an hour while we play you some outdated Christmas music.

That was the position I found myself in last week. Long after the last turkey sandwich had been devoured I found myself on the end of a phone line listening to an endless loop of 'So this is Christmas and what have you done?'.

Welcome to the world of call centre hell. As the minutes ticked by that 'your call is important to us' started tolling like a bell in my head.

Why can't call centres be more honest? If they would only say 'look we don't give a damn whether you ring or not, we're all underpaid and you've interrupted a busy morning filing our nails', you'd know where you were.

But to be told your call is important to us when they patently could not give a damn is an insult.

It was my own fault really. Having found that my battered old blue Rover Metro actually worked for five days running I decided to buy a stereo for it and was told I would then have to ring some other call centre to get it fitted. Don't ask.

Usually the only sound in my car is fevered praying as another lorry driver pulls out in front of me into a space that wasn't there so I thought a bit of music might make a nice change.

Driving brings out a severe case of the Hail Marys in me and it was faith that got me into trouble with the stereo. As soon as I bought it, the car packed up.

Regular readers of this column will hardly be surprised. Since getting the old heap of rust serviced I have had no end of trouble with it.

Finding a mechanic who can fix it has turned into a quest that makes the search for the Holy Grail just a trip to the corner shop by comparison.

Every brand of mechanic from a bloke called Brian whose toolkit consists of an oily rag and two rusty spanners to a large garage equipped for Formula One cars have all had a look at it.

They all start confidently and end in despair. One even turned to philosophy, telling me cars had minds of their own and we shouldn't dare to question them.

It's not as if I want much from the old heap of rust.

I don't care about its performance. I don't mind if it wants to labour away from traffic lights slower than a double decker bus. I just want it to start at point A (home) each morning and keep going until reaching point B (work). Then if possible reverse the procedure at night.

Meanwhile I am back on public transport. One day's travel costs half the price of a tank of petrol, and a tank lasts a week. So anyone who complains petrol is expensive compared to public transport is talking out of their big end.

Meanwhile there must be one mechanic in South Bucks who can tell why a car won't start on a damp January morning. Is it too much to ask?

One more garage and then I'm off to Lourdes.