Tomcat awoke with the sun streaming through the red, white, and blue chintz curtains – it was just after noon, quite early for him during the week. He looked around the blue-painted room and located his red dressing gown and light-blue slippers, which were under the white 19th-Century chaise-longue, for some reason Tomcat had forgotten.

He romped down the stairs and started cooking his favourite breakfast of kippers and porridge. It reminded him of those summers long ago when Tomcat and his pater would walk for miles after a huge breakfast such as this. They’d swim in a few lochs, climb trees, chase deer, run up mountains, carry boulders, and generally have a wonderful time in the Scottish Highlands. Tomcat’s reveries were broken by the chimes of Big Ben from the front-door bell

“Pish and tish, who can this be at such an early hour?” said Tompkins to himself as he strode to the door, almost pulling it off the hinges.

On the step was a short man, wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a cigarette he’d rolled himself.

“Yuri, how the blazes are you?” boomed Tomcat.

“My name, Mr Tompkins, is Vasek, I am not sure where you get the name Yuri from, anyway your car is here for you.”

“Well, pish, bosh, and besh, that’s quick work, Vasek, my Polish friend.”

“Slovenia, Mr Tompkins, Slovenia,” replied Vasek courteously.

“Well, alright, East European, it’s still quick work, regardless of where you are from in that part of the world.”

“Well, quick work of a kind,” replied Vasek thoughtfully, “you see your car was, now what are the correct words in the English, a complete write-off, so I swap your car with another car in the showroom, before they open up, as you say.”

“You broke into the showroom, drove my car in, and drove another car, this car…” said Tomcat pointing at the shining motor on the street..”out of the showroom, after changing the number plates of course?”