WHAT is it with men and cars? Our weekend guest arrived bursting with the news of a bobby-dazzler which had overtaken him on the motorway - so it must have been shifting, I have to say.

It was the road model which had to be available before a car could compete at Le Mans. Well, it might be Le Mans, but I'm as vague on that as on all the attributes, lovingly listed, which his fleeting glimpse had taken in, including the marque.

The only car whose details interest me at the moment is a geriatric saloon called Almost William (because he's nearly Orange - I wished I hadn't asked).

William's arrival was heralded by a phonecall from the offspring: "I've got the chance of an H-reg Peugeot at £100."

Keep calm, I told myself, before taking a deep breath and saying she wasn't to touch it with anything as short as a barge pole unless Tom, the old banger expert in their gang, had crawled all over it. I was sure both his thumbs would turn down on such a "bargain".

Too late. He'd almost had it to bits. It belonged to a chap he worked with and he'd said, along with a promise to help with the work, that it wasn't nearly as bad as the seller thought. At £100, I had my doubts, but being a Mum I kept mum. Sir was in no position to offer an opinion; his knowledge of cars' innards stops after routine checks.

We made William's acquaintance soon afterwards on a weekend visit and the first thing I noticed was the original dealer's name on his rear number plate. William wasn't well; he could just about limp raucously to Tesco and back, but, like his new owner, he'd moved down from the North - from Ripon. I hoped it was a good omen.

Over the next weeks, scrapyards were scoured for a serviceable exhaust manifold, bits I'd never heard of were ordered and fitted and William took his place in the commuting car pool.

It had to come, of course, that first long motorway trip North. The journey has become familiar to us, but we always drive half of it each. Doing it as a solo stint isn't the same. Worried? Of course I wasn't. I was plain panic stricken.

It was to be a Friday evening, too, when the weekly commuters and the weekenders combine in three-lane clumps. Come the day, it was also the end-of-term Friday when many families head off on holiday; there was a lorry fire on one motorway and every kind of weather from blazing sun to raining stair rods on the others.

Not, of course, that I could worry about the last two in advance.

The first message or, rather, the 1st msg said; "Done M4 & M25. At Newport Pagnell servs. Overheating (me not Wm)."

Then there was the "don't expect me on time" phonecall from standing traffic in Leicestershire, followed by more text messages: "Havg a Woolley Edge fruit salad" and finally a terse, two-word opinion of being stationary in a downpour on the Wetherby bypass.

With my own mobile in my pinny pocket as I dusted and vacuumed, it hit me that all this contact made a vital difference. I wasn't worried.

I never thought I'd say this: hooray for mobile phones.