In a letter that was sent to, but not published in, the Daily Telegraph (see below) Geoff Chessum asked: “Are there any petrol stations left in Britain where your car is filled up for you by a cheery attendant, who also wipes your windscreen?”

Well, are there? The last I remember was in the middle of Shipston-on-Stour where I used often to stop on the way to reviewing duties at Stratford. The exceptionally well-spoken gent squirting the fuel sounded as if he would like to have been an actor himself.

I felt in sore need of help on the forecourt on Monday night as I drove back from Aladdin at Milton Keynes Theatre. Very low on diesel, I called first at the Murco garage at the beginning of the road to Buckingham. The only member of staff on duty was out in the sheeting rain testing the level of stocks in the underground tanks with what appeared to be a giant dipstick. He shouted across to me that the pumps would be out of action for five minutes or so. I didn’t wait, chiefly because it would have been impossible to fill up without getting soaked by the rain being blown under the canopy by winds so strong they rendered my umbrella useless.

The rain and wind were even stronger by the time I reached a filling station on the outskirts of Bicester. Without seriously weatherproof clothes, I would have been drenched in seconds trying to fill up. Eventually (with a warning message saying I had ten miles’ worth of diesel left), I managed to refuel in the dry — well, comparative dry — at the Shell station beside the Pear Tree Roundabout.

With the fierce weather set to continue over the next few days, I urge others to heed my warning and carry protective clothing on any journey when the car might need filling.

Mr Chessum’s observations are taken from I Rest My Case... (Aurum, £9.99), the third volume of unpublished letters to the Daily Telegraph, edited by Iain Hollingshead. The book would make an ideal Christmas present for those who relish the querulous, quirky and quaint. I might return to it in a later column.