I’m amazed at the number of people who don’t know how to maximise the advantages of air conditioning. A friend who’d only had old cars until recently bought a new one, and rang to say how hard it was to keep the windscreen demisted. I suggested using the air con – oh no, she didn’t want to be cold.

But air conditioning doesn’t only cool air, it dries it – if you work in an air-conditioned office, you’ll know what I mean. If you have the temperature control turned to warm, and the air con on, you’ll get warm, dry air. Point it at the windscreen, even with ‘cool’ selected, and you have an efficient demisting tool – far more efficient than blasting warm, damp air about. Which is why cars automatically switch on the air conditioning when you turn the dial to ‘windscreen’.

I mentioned this to another neighbour only to hear she’d been driving carefully to work on winter mornings, peering through the little hole wiped with her hanky at the dark, narrow, winding tarmac ahead, the windscreen still misty as she hit the traffic – despite owning air con. She hasn’t run it even in summer as she doesn’t want to drain power and increase her car’s thirst for fossil-juice, yet driving with the window open increases drag and reduces fuel efficiency too.

Talk about variety being the spice of life – just had a rather over-spiced week which started with testing the versatility of a Toyota Yaris 1.5 by loading it up with backpacks and hiking detritus then heading away for the weeaknd with friend and backpack.

Swapped it for Honda's sporty CRZ hybrid.

Drove that to Motek to drive a 7.0-metre-long, 3.2-metre high prototype motorhome.

Next day, ride the Triumph Rocket III roadster before it's due back – a 2.3-litre behemoth that weighs 368kg and at 200Nm delivers an enviable punch-to-weight equation few cars can beat.

Then on Friday tooled out to Hampton Downs for a passenger ride in the two-seat Toyota Racing Series car with Sam McNeill at the helm.

For not enough laps, given a few more he reckoned he could get within four seconds of the single-seat cars despite my heft aboard (knew I shouldn't have had that carrot cake) but they wouldn't let us back out. Boo.

Today? BMW's M5 in the drive, so sod's law, roadworks as far as the eye can see and very little opportunity to give it its head, with the prospect of Suzuki's new Swift Sport at Wellington's Boomrock on Thursday and a few hundred kays in Mazda's clever 3 Skyactiv this coming weekend

These may be uncertain times for freelance motor noters but at least they're rarely boring!