On 29 January 2007, I became the proud (joint) owner of a brand new Toyota Yaris Zinc D4D. I actually passed my driving test on 19 May 1998, and up to this point, had never bought a car, preferring to spend my money on university-related costs.

Now that I’ve moved home permanently, and Rachel’s Ford Fiesta was getting on a bit (5 years this year), we decided to buy a new car, and so we did.

We’ve called the car “Yarry” (although I prefer “Inky”), and I absolutely love driving it. Despite being a small car, it is very spacious inside, and it has all the mod cons; power steering, electric windows, AC, alloy wheels, CD player. It is a metallic eclipse black colour. The engine it has, a 1.4 diesel, is equivalent to a 1.6 petrol, so it is quite a powerful car to drive.

Oh yes, and it is an environmentally-friendly car. It’s CO2 emissions are so low that the car tax is only £50 per year!

Today, I used the leaf hoover (something like this) that I had for Christmas for the first time. You’ll laugh at what happened.

When I switched it on for first time, I was in doorway between the kitchen and the garden, and started hoovering, sucking up the leaves. I then heard Rachel scream, looked around and realised that the bag that the leaves go in wasn’t completely zipped up, so shredded leaves ended up all over the kitchen, which I had just been cleaned!

/screams