[Sir Trev]

Now I know why the radio in my car stopped working while I was cleaning it yesterday...

Went to head out this morning to stock up the wine rack - always a pleasant job. Odd, the car won't unlock. Wandered around it pressing the button, nothing. Went back in and got the spare - same result. Fished the little key stub out of the fob (push button start so you only need it for cases like this) and could I get the door open? No... Fished out some pliers and, oh, it turns the other way to unlock manually but there was no way I could have done that by hand! No dash lights, nothing. Multimeter across the battery and it's only showing 8 volts. Fudge.

The moral of the story is don't find you have a dead battery on a Sunday as everywhere that will have a battery for a Focus with stop/start will be shut. Apparently it's a more beefy unit and is not normally kept in stock. Hey ho, I'll shirk from home tomorrow and borrow Lady Poppy's car when she gets home to pop out to Eurocarparts who have them on the shelf, behind a locked (on a Sunday) door.

ps, I got the wine using Lady P's car so it's not too bad.