I started this week by chasing the refuse lorry in my dressing gown. I’d like to laugh it off and say it’s something we all do from time to time, but I have a sneaking suspicion that for a sizeable proportion of the population, it isn’t.

The bin collectors kindly pretended they hadn’t noticed my attire; in fact I think they rather enjoyed edging the lorry an extra 100m away each time I nearly reached them, and I’m hoping no-one else noticed the pyjama-clad figure dashing through the early- morning mist with a large wheelie bin in tow.

Luckily last week was also the village school’s belated dress-up for Help for Heroes day so perhaps my inappropriate roadside spa-look could’ve been put down to a fleeting Wee Willy Winkie, heroic in his ecological fervour.

The Children each chose a hero as whom to parade. The Youngest picked Guy Fawkes but, however much I enjoy a firework-rich sky above a cracking bonfire, I’m uneasy about mass pyromania counting as heroism.

The Middle One opted for Bobby Moore and again, I’m not sure a talent for on-field ball management is true bravery.

The Daughter, however, did me proud as Emmeline Pankhurst, the British political activist who helped women win the vote in 1918 with steely determination and some railings.

Pankhurst died in 1928, but I recently discovered she’s still needed today, in car showrooms, and I’m thinking of sending the Daughter down the Abingdon Road in her suffragette costume.

You see, over the last month or two, and in my car-less state, I have really fancied a Yeti (no reflection on the looks of The Partner-in-Crime but, if pushed, I’ll admit to a thing for Chewbacca).

Even Jeremy Clarkson rates The Yeti apparently, for what a Skoda’s worth. And I was all set to tame my own. But my ambition to track down this rare beast melted in the face of the Abominable salesman.

While other customers were plain to see, it seems I had mistakenly worn a Harry Potter invisibility cloak. Not even a risqué Lady GaGa performance, shouting Me Me Me in a Liz-Hurley dress, would have caused a flicker from the man behind the brochures.

The requested test drive was legendary: never to be seen or heard.

And with the new democratic right that Emmeline fought for, I voted with my feet: I sidled away quietly to take my business elsewhere, somewhere equal but opposite and where I will not be wearing the invisibility cloak.

I’m saving that for chasing the dustbin men.