Man with a grievance

We’d been excommunicated from the eBay auction site for over a year. Non-payment of fees. They said I owed £4.17; I maintained that I’d paid it. And because it’s easier to get in touch with God than it is with the eBay administration, that’s how things stood until a fortnight ago when I caved in to pressure from my boy and sent another cheque.

At the weekend my boy comes to stay, as usual, and he’s logged on to eBay before he’s even taken his coat off. After lunch on Saturday I’m in the kitchen washing up. He comes in and advises me that he’s bid £500 for a car on my behalf and we are currently the highest bidder with 20 minutes to go. I dry my soapy hands and go and have a look at the computer screen.

The car is an old BMW 5 series. ‘Good condition. Smooth runner,’ it says. Other than that there is ominously little information. Large, almost professional-quality photographs, however, show the car parked in a muddy lane after a downpour. The miraculous clarity of the light shows up every tensioned water droplet on the polished metallic surface of the car. A mirror image of the car is artistically reflected in a puddle in the foreground. The colour of the car, dove-grey, exactly and rather wonderfully matches the colour of the sky. On the horizon, oblique rays of sunshine illuminate a distant row of council houses.

Not only has my boy been mugged by a pretty picture, his knowledge of the geography of Britain is appalling. We live in south Devon. The last time he bid for a car and won it, I had to go all the way to Newcastle to pick it up.