Peter Rhodes on buying a car, getting fleeced by a hotel and paying the price of a perfect wedding

I HAVE been helping a young friend buy a car because we old wrinklies have a deep understanding of such things, don't we? At the showroom, I was out of my depth in minutes. This "arrangement fee" of £50 - when did that creep into the business of a garage selling a used banger to a punter? What they seem to be saying is: "We will sell this car to you at the agreed price and then charge you an extra fifty quid for the privilege." Terrific.

BUT in an age when every trading organisation tries it on, why should car dealers not get their snouts in the trough? After all, the hotel industry has been doing it for years, and we still get caught.

A FEW days ago, I booked a hotel on one of the online reservation websites, weighing the usual factors - location, size of room, type of beds, variety of breakfast - and so on, and pressed the button to complete the deal at the keenest price. Minutes later, having got my reservation and card details, the hotel sent a note that parking was £10 per night extra. Does the term "sharp practice" still mean anything?

MEANWHILE, we are having a pre-autumnal shift around of some of the furniture including a venerable dresser which holds the Chateau Rhodes collection of old booze. Three half-empty bottles of Christmas mead were found to be past their sell-by date and duly poured away. Treacherous stuff, Xmas mead. Before the big day you buy gallons of it, lured on by jolly mistletoey mental images of hordes of neighbours shaking the snow off their boots and calling for something strong and gingery. But they never do. They either want a can of lager or something soft because they're driving. The years slip by. The mead goes cloudy and crusty. Mead makers, like mustard makers, must make their profits from the stuff we chuck away.

ACCORDING to a survey, getting an invitation to a wedding can seriously affect your wealth. The average wedding now costs more than £30,000. But the cost of being a guest can be outrageous, too - averaging about £390 by the time you've paid for new clothes, accommodation and the present. If the bride is one of those princesses who announces the wedding is to be in Majorca and you're all expected to pay to be there, things can get very expensive, or very nasty. Many of the people questioned said they'd had to turn down an invitation on cost grounds. And of those who declined, nearly two-thirds said they had lost friendships as a result. At the root of all this is the ruthless determination of couples to make their wedding perfect, no matter how much misery it causes the guests.

MY favourite perfect-wedding tale is of the bride who thought it reasonable for all the guests to drive from the perfect church to the perfect restaurant for the reception. It turned out to be two hours away. Just grit your teeth and chuck the confetti. Hard . . . .