Have a karma Christmas with womens car insurance

I'm driving to my mother's house on Friday. It's Wednesday and I'm already daunted by the prospect. I'll have packed up my womens car insurance business for the weekend and I'll be off on the two and a half hour drive to Somerset for a weekend of Christmas shopping and M&S food goodies.

My daughter is coming with me for moral support and we are leaving the boys at home to eat pizza (both of them), drink beer, (only one of them) and to watch the new James Bond flick at the local cinema, (funnily enough I think it's the adult boy who's looking forward to this the most).

This trip to my mother represents an attempted appeasement for not being able to get down there more often; it has become something of an annual ritual and it entails me chivvying up the children to make Christmas lists and hurrying out to the car to make sure my tyres are pumped up and there is oil in the engine.

Recently I drove for two hours to Cirencester without oil in the engine. A little over 25 minutes into the journey a warning light came on. My partner rifled through the glove compartment for the owner's manual; we had just joined the busy Friday night M3 and the thought of stopping was a tad scary. He eventually found what the little amber light meant: electrical fault – you can continue driving, consult a Vauxhall garage as soon as possible.

So we drove on and then, two days later, we drove back and when we took the car to my friendly mechanic he charged me nearly £100 to do a thorough testing of the car and, oh yes, put in nearly two litres of oil – that seemed to cure the problem. What I wanted to know was – Why didn't the oil warning light come on? – it might just have made me put some in. I know why – it was designed by a man; probably a mechanic.

Since I've been working for the aforementioned women's car insurance company, I have been extremely busy and slightly forgetful. I remembered to check the oil in July when we went on our family holiday, but time flies by so fast that when we set off at the end of September it felt like I had only just done it. As it was we were driving on oil residue and the engine didn't like it.

I have also managed to lose two purses, and I almost lost a brand new digital camera and its bag (that also had my purse in it). Luckily, that was handed in at the athletics stadium and a very nice young man called Brad tried his damnedest to appease my feelings of stupidity as he handed it back to me. When I told him I had in the past handed in lost wallets, phones etc, at various events he said, "There you go, it's karma."

I'm not entirely certain about the notion of karma, but I was jolly glad to get the camera back.

And yet, I will not trust karma to get me to my mother's house; I will put oil in the engine, pump the tyres up and even put water in the washer bottle. That'll do it, I'm sure.

And by Saturday afternoon we will have spent an hour stocking up on life's essentials from M&S (you know what I mean ladies and I'm not talking about engine oil either), and we will have chosen shortbread for Gladys and Gordon up the road, and Fox's luxury assortment in a limited edition tin for the girls at mum's Doctor's surgery. There will be a chinoiserie jar of peaches in brandy for someone I've never heard of and I may well have chosen my own Christmas gift form Marks' gift section.

It's becoming a ritual and I have to say, I quite like it. We'll have a laugh about the fact that I forgot to bring my toothbrush, my daughter will leave a small doll tucked behind a cushion on mum's sofa and I'll get home on Sunday night knowing that all is well with the world.

And when I return to my womens car insurance work on Monday morning I will be satisfied that I'm not such a dope after all, and that actually, like most of my female car insurance buying customers, I am doing quite a good job of things. I'm certainly keeping my mechanic in overalls, that's for sure.