On Thursday morning, the doorbell rings. I find a man at the door holding a clipboard. “I have two pallets of sand,” he says. “And one of cement.” I look at him for a moment.

“For me?” I say. He shows me the address. There is a large vehicle in the street behind him, with a crane on it.

The sand and cement, it transpires, have been ordered on my behalf; workmen are coming on Monday to dig a foundation for what will be my office – a boxy shed at the end of the garden where I will work in peace. One day, with luck, I will die in it.

But this is no time to think of death’s sweet release; the man needs to put his sand somewhere. There’s a small off-street parking space at the front of the house, but there’s a car in it: my wife’s old Mini.

“I’d move it,” I tell the man, “but it won’t start.” He looks at the gap between the car and the wall, then climbs into his truck. He returns with a large remote control, which he uses to operate the crane, picking up three pallets and dropping them neatly into the gap, one beside the other, with inches to spare.

“You have a cool job,” I say.

“Sign this,” he says. There remains the problem of the workmen arriving on Monday. The car must move.

On Friday, armed with a can of something called Easy Start, I lift the bonnet of the Mini. I pull the choke and turn the key until the battery dies. I attach jump leads from the other car – the real car – and try again. I spray Easy Start into the air intake, as instructed. The car doesn’t start. You said it would be easy, I think, reading the can. I lift the cover off the spark plugs and stare.

“I’ve failed,” I say to my wife. “I’ve failed us all.”

My wife calls the AA and a man appears within the hour. By the time I get downstairs, he’s lifting the bonnet of the Mini. Standing beside my wife, I watch, arms folded, as he attaches jump leads.

He tries various combinations of choke and throttle, to no avail. He sprays Easy Start into the intake. He lifts the spark-plug cover and stares.

“I did all this,” I say.

“Leave it with me,” the man says.

I return to my desk. Twenty minutes later, I hear the sound of an engine catching, followed by a throaty growl. A puff of black smoke floats past the window. My wife shouts: “Hurrah!”

Outside, the Mini’s engine is sounding uncertain.

“How often do you drive it?” says the man.

“Not very,” my wife says.

“A car like this needs a good run now and again,” he says. My wife looks at me.

“Will you drive it round for a bit?” she says.

“I haven’t got time,” I say. “I’m a businessman.” The AA man and my wife exchange looks.

“Fine,” I say, folding myself into the driver’s seat. The garden wall is an inch from the passenger door. On the right side, the car is already brushing against a pallet of sand. In the tiny rear window, the hand of the AA man is beckoning me backwards.

I reverse, proceeding by millimetres. The garden wall edges closer. The car’s antenna catches on a branch and the wing mirror knocks into the wheelie bin. Ignoring the AA man’s hand, I go forward.

The front tyre catches on the edge of a pallet. Now I can’t go backward or forward or open either door. I try to roll down my window, but it sticks. I’m trapped in a tiny clown car. My wife and the AA man have never seen anything funnier.

Eventually, I am coaxed out of the drive and past a badly parked van in small, humiliating increments. I pull alongside the AA man and, after forcing my window down an inch with my fingers, address his belt buckle.

“Thank you,” I say. He laughs. I set off down the road in a cloud of smoke, willing the engine not to stall.