The phenomenon ‘Murphy’s Law’ may have more sophisticated definitions but mine is that, if it is at all possible for something to go wrong, at some point it will.

We all laugh at ‘grumpy old men’ – and I am often described thus myself – but the fact is that I am a living example of someone whose existence is burdened by continual bad luck. All I crave is a simple, quiet, uneventful life … therefore inevitably mine is burdened by people like son Roswell who bring little but complication, pain & suffering.

Take the simple matter of the private sale of my car and the purchase of another to replace it. I took advantage of a package offer from an organisation called Autotrader which, amongst other things, runs a website and a series of regional magazines devoted to the subject: for the relatively cost effective sum of £50 (fifty pound sterling) my car would appear in both for three weeks.

Within twenty four hours of the car appearing on the website I had entertained two prospective buyers – the first a motor trader who offered silly money and was turned down and the second an apparently straightforward young gentleman who eventually bought it.

At this point my familiar bad luck kicked in. It was a bitterly cold, icy day and, as we both got out of the vehicle after I had demonstrated how easy it was to operate the ‘soft top’ hood, we noticed that there was a two-inch vertical tear in the plastic rear window that had not been there previously (probably caused by the act of lowering & raising the roof in such conditions). A call to the local Porsche dealer extracted the information that to replace the window would cost some £475 (four hundred and seventy pounds sterling) plus (17.5%) VAT.

Having accepted my offer to take that much off the asking price, the chap agreed to return in thirty-six hours to conclude the deal. On the day in between, as I was driving to the coast to see my father, a warning light began flashing on the dashboard ‘engine problem – do not drive – contact dealer immediately’. When I did so, I was told this was potentially very serious (and costly) indeed. I was obliged to book it in immediately and (humiliatingly) ring the prospective purchaser to advise him of the problem.

Fortunately – and this was my one bit of good fortune in the entire episode – there turned out to be nothing serious wrong at all. In fact either the engineer doing the service the previous week had failed to restore a bung to a pipe, or alternatively the bung was faulty, which had allowed air to get into the carburettors … or something. Anyway it was repaired at no cost to me, but to the dealer of an apology. Just as well, since the aforementioned service the previous week had cost me nearly £4000 (four thousand pounds)!

In a fair & reasonable life you’d think that would be that – save for a phone call to Autotrader to announce the sale and request removal of the advertisement from website & magazine.

Er … not quite. It is now two and a half weeks since I sold the car and I am still receiving up to twenty calls and/or texts to my mobile a day from members of the public enquiring about it. I have rung Autotrader three times requesting, nay pleading, for them to remove the advertisement from their publications and have now given up because my ‘new friends’ keep informing me that my car is still proudly exhibited where it shouldn’t be.

What is it with tradesmen and service providers these days? Every where I go I see the kind of stupidity, administrative cock-up, absence of common sense and sheer lack of customer care that makes me wonder how on earth these people survive in business.

Yesterday I arrived at Halford’s hardware store for my new (well second-hand, but new to me) car’s forty-minute appointment to have a satellite navigation device fitted – an event I was much looking forward to since I have not previously enjoyed this facility in any of my vehicles.

Was this going to be a simple exercise? Was I soon going to be driving home testing out my new toy, enjoying my enhanced motoring experience?

Don’t be silly. This is Kevin Lyle you’re talking to.

After a delay extending to ninety minutes – during which I had trudged a quarter of a mile each way to do a shop at Sainsbury’s supermarket in order to kill time – my helpful Halford’s engineer announced that for some reason he could not find a 12 volt wire point within my vehicle’s amplifier to which to affix the device. Pointing out that I had other commitments that day which could not wait, I declined his offer to spend the afternoon surfing the internet to find out more and cancelled the purchase. Instead I offered Halford’s what I considered a fair bargain – they find out how to fit a satellite navigation device to my car and (as and when … or is it ‘if’?) they do, I’ll come out and buy one.