recently had a Proustian moment. Not with a cake and a cup of tea, but with a shovel. Workmen in my garden dug-up a 1:43 model of the full-size Mercedes-Benz W124 estate that my wife bought when our children were small. I felt it was a safe car for them in London, the more so because we had a male nanny who had been a tank driver in the Slovakian Army, so Vauxhall Bridge Road in rush hour held no fears for
