Just a warning to others. Yesterday I had a very interesting experience. I had been out cycling and had had a lovely coffee with my cycling buddy. We returned to our cars and got ready to leave. At the last minute I remembered that I had to put the supplementary number plate on my bike so I jumped out of my car to do this. There was a little click and to my horror, my car had locked itself with my bag, phone and keys on the inside, and me on the outside. My friend was driving off down the road and I was running behind waving and shouting. Luckily she saw me and stopped. She took me home to get a spare key so I was lucky. If I had been in an isolated area I would have been stuck, my bike was locked onto the car so I wouldn't have even been able to get it off. Apparently this is quite common in wet weather so be warned! Just another of life's little adventures.

I have a funny experience not so long ago along the same vein - when my car immobiliser stopped working so wouldn't lock or unlock the car - I would spend about half an hour trying to lock the car only to come back and spend another half an hour trying to unlock the car. I ended up throwing it away and going back to using a car key.

Technology is fantastic when it works !

I had a similar experience when charging my car battery after an inside light got left on one night. I was carefully reading the manual, and it said to disconnect the battery from the car before connecting the charger. So I did. And click went the door locks. With my keys inside. Thankfully I was at home and my husband's spare was not on his everyday key ring.

Stephanie and Jenna, it is such an easy thing to do isn't it - or for technology to do.

Ingrid, don't the Immobilisers have batteries in them? It sounds as if that is the problem, and that may just need replacing. I think those Mr Minute stalls that you usually find in the centre of malls can replace them?