Last Saturday had looked so promising but ended up being quite the weirdest night I've had so far this year.

It began well enough. Rafia and I took our two eldest children to see George's Marvellous Medicine at Brighton's Theatre Royal. Eve and Rafia's son, Kit, had had a grand evening. And Rafia was in a good mood too.

As we left the theatre and headed for a nearby multi-storey car park, I suddenly realised that I didn't have the car park ticket.

"I must have left it in the car," I said to Rafia and the children. "Join the queue and I'll just run to get it."

The queue to pay was very long so I thought I would have plenty of time. However, I couldn't find the ticket anywhere.

I emptied out my purse, I checked all the obvious places inside the car and then around the outside of it. I retraced my footsteps to the car park entrance. I emptied my purse again but still no luck.

I returned to the pay booth, where Rafia and the children were now at the front of the queue and holding things up.

"Sorry," I said to the attendant. "I've lost my ticket but I can prove that I have just been to the theatre." I waved my seat ticket at him.

"It'll be £12," he said, passing a form to me to fill out.

There was a murmur of shock around me - the cost would have been £3-something if I'd still had my ticket - and I blushed. Worse was to come.

"I can't remember the registration number," I said as I worked my way down the list of questions.

"You'll have to get it then," said the unsmiling attendant.

So I trotted back across the car park. When I returned to the booth, another customer was being served. "Five three eight, five three eight," I kept chanting while the man took 15 years to gather up his change.

I finally handed over my £12 and tried to stop myself from thinking of all the things I could have done with the money I had just, quite literally, thrown away.

Back at the car, Rafia found my ticket. It had somehow got wedged under the driver's seat and would have been visible to everyone except the driver.

"Rafia, you're my saviour," I said, promising her immortality and a place among the gods.

I hurried back to the pay booth. The unsmiling attendant looked at the ticket without a flicker of emotion.

"Have you got the receipt I just gave you."

"The ... the ...," I had no recollection of him giving me anything other than a bored look. So I emptied my purse again and sifted through the debris of my life until I found a faded NCP slip.

"A-ha," I said victoriously as I was reunited with my £9. Feeling jollier, I returned to the car.

Rafia was just finishing a phone conversation with her husband Jake, who was babysitting his daughter with my husband at our house.

She was looking a little concerned. "There's a surprise waiting for us," she said.

We arrived at my house to find Jake and my husband had polished off several bottles of beer and were arguing incoherently with our mutual friend Gemma, who had turned up unexpectedly and a little the worse for alcohol herself, and was demanding my husband play Stairway To Heaven on his guitar.

Sunday, by contrast, was delightfully dull.