Away on holiday, and the bastards stole my car. I’ve spoken to the police but they can’t help. These bastards, you see, they’re connected. They’re the biggest, meanest, most chiselling bunch of organised crooks from WC1 to N3. They’re known by all sorts of names, many of them unprintable. To most, though, they go by the moniker of “Camden Council”.

We’re talking actual stealing here. I am faultless. They suspended a parking bay, on which my car was parked, and then, because I hadn’t moved it, they took it away.

What could I do? I wasn’t there. I didn’t even realise it had gone until yesterday, when I cycled past the place where it glaringly wasn’t. Did they just move it across the street, so they could get on with their lives? Did they hell. They took it to the pound and they want £260 to give it back. That seems a pretty clear case of theft to me. And extortion with menaces, to boot. The Mob insists otherwise. They seem to feel they’re punishing me. But what for? Do they think I should have driven to the South of France? With my whole family? In an old Mini?

“You might get it back on appeal,” said the bloke from the council, who was keen to be helpful. Appeal? Might? Get it back? God, I wish we could swear on this page. You steal my car when my back is turned, steal my money to my face and then expect me to feel grateful that I’m allowed to beg for it to be returned?

And there’s no way out. If I don’t pay up, they’ll ratchet the fine up by £40 a day for 56 days until it’s almost two and a half grand. Who can afford that? I can’t. Even some members of the Shadow Cabinet probably can’t.

And if I just let them squash it (and I’m tempted, even though I've owned it since I passed my test and it would probably make me cry) then — get this — I still have to pay £120. For the parking ticket. Which they issued to my car, which I had parked entirely legally, so that they could steal it.

Does it look terribly self-important, for a columnist to bang on about this sort of thing just because it’s happened to them?

Sure, probably. It just struck me, as I hung up, sweating, that maybe columnists don’t bang on about these little miseries enough. We always worry about the big things; the fiddled expenses, the bomb plots, Jordan’s boobs, the lies that lead to wars. It’s the little things, however, that pollute our lives so much more. The receptionist at A&E, your electricity bill, the new wheelie bin, the traffic jam, the cancelled flight, the delivery that never arrives.

It’s the powerlessness, always, against these shapeless systems that seem to hate us, and leave us no option but to hate them back. It’s awful. What a way to live. What a place. What bastards.

A new angle

It wasn’t a bad holiday, though. We were in the South of France, at the in-laws’ place. Amazing the things you learn, when you’re away.

We wanted to watch Andy Murray, but the TV seemed a bit French for that. So, because I don’t really like the beach, and because I don’t have any proper hobbies, and because the alternative was delving back into an interminable book by Tom Wolfe about hippies, I spent a morning fiddling with the satellite box, trying to make it more British. I failed, obviously. Still, like I said, amazing the things you learn.

First off, did you know that all satellite dishes point towards the Equator? Obvious, I suppose. I’d never really thought about it. But it’s a big place, the Equator. Your basic French dish, I now know, points to the Atlantic Bird 3 satellite, at 5 degrees west. Your British one, meanwhile, points to the Astra 2d, at 28.2 degrees east. In other words, they’re 33.2 degrees apart. In other, other words you could stand in a street with a compass and a protractor, and figure out where the Brits live.

Back home, this has stuck with me. Cycling to work, my eyes are on the walls. Most are the basic BSkyB (39 per cent owned by, blessed be their name, etc). Bigger dish, aimed to the left, could be Turkish, could be Greek. Aimed right, could be anything from Spanish to Farsi. And in the middle, you’ve Scandinavians, Poles, Romanians, all sorts. And you can tell just by cycling past. This is common knowledge, I’m sure, if you work in an industry connected to law enforcement, TV maintenance or ethnic cleansing. But me, I had no idea.

What’s new, pussycat?

Much internet buzz about Tango the cat, the big ginger tom who strayed on to the set of Question Time last week. But why the fuss? It seems perfectly obvious he was just doing an impression of George Galloway.

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