The car has been playing up. When you use the clutch, on release, it seems to stick slightly open. After a few seconds it completely releases. It’s been happening for a few weeks. I’ve been trying to work out if it gets better as it gets warmer but can’t quite work it out.

It went in for a service recently and I asked V to ask the garage to fix it. They said that it would take at least one day so it was agreed to do it on another day. This would mean a lot of expense, I thought.

This morning was particularly bad. My thoughts, as I’m driving V to work, was that we would have to take it in very, very soon. I decided that I would search for other people’s experiences on this problem as maybe it was a known and common problem.

After I dropped V off and, as I continued to work, I found it was also odd that, to the left of the clutch pedal, the carpet seemed to be rucked as I put my foot there (which I do when not on the clutch as there is a little ‘foot rest’ type of thing).

By the time I got to work it seemed to be worse than ever. When I got out of the car I decided I would have a look. Sure enough, the mat was rucked at that point.

I thought I would check the pedal and, incredibly, when I pushed it down and let it go again, it got stuck on it’s way back up – by the mat!

So what would have taken the garage one day, cost me a fortune and meant the hassle of getting lifts to and from work actually took 10 seconds to fix – by pulling the mat back to its proper position. I wonder what the garage would have done if we had taken the car in to have it looked at? Would they have found the problem? What would they have charged?