Firstly, the number of phones it supports is meagre at best – most of which are old and retired now. None of the Nokia E or N-series phones (or indeed, any Series 60 Symbian phones) are supported – though that’s a Nokia issue, rather than an Audi one, which they’ve only just fixed with the E71 and N96.

Secondly, when you have a compatible phone, and you wish to utilize the Audi’s wonderful voice-activated controls, it all turns to goopy shit. To illustrate this, I recorded my attempt this morning at trying to dial my voicemail box using the voice controls. All the car needs to do, is dial ’901′.

Apologies for the quality of the recording, it was done by using another phone’s Voice Recorder and then exporting the audio off.

Painful MP3 here. (4:19)

the fucking scene is fucking sad
the fucking news is fucking bad
the fucking weed is fucking turf
the fucking speed is fucking surf
the fucking folks are fucking daft
don’t make me fucking laugh
it fucking hurts to look around
everywhere in chicken town

the fucking train is fucking late
you fucking wait you fucking wait
you’re fucking lost and fucking found
stuck in fucking chicken town

the fucking view is fucking vile
for fucking miles and fucking miles
the fucking babies fucking cry
the fucking flowers fucking die
the fucking food is fucking muck
the fucking drains are fucking fucked
the colour scheme is fucking brown
everywhere in chicken town

the fucking pubs are fucking dull
the fucking clubs are fucking full
of fucking girls and fucking guys
with fucking murder in their eyes
a fucking bloke is fucking stabbed
waiting for a fucking cab
you fucking stay at fucking home
the fucking neighbors fucking moan
keep the fucking racket down
this is fucking chicken town

the fucking train is fucking late
you fucking wait you fucking wait
you’re fucking lost and fucking found
stuck in fucking chicken town

the fucking pies are fucking old
the fucking chips are fucking cold
the fucking beer is fucking flat
the fucking flats have fucking rats
the fucking clocks are fucking wrong
the fucking days are fucking long
it fucking gets you fucking down
evidently chicken town

John Cooper-Clarke, 1980.

It wasn’t til bedtime that we’d realised that we’d need to go grocery shopping. The idea of wandering around Morrisons on a Bank Holiday didn’t really appeal, so I reckoned that we could get with the rest of the 21st century and order our shopping online. We’ve done this a few times before, but for some reason the habit never sticks.

By the time we’d got a list together, and found all the items on Tesco’s site, it was nearly half one in the morning. To my amazement, the site offered us a delivery slot between 2 and 4pm that afternoon! The same day! On a bank holiday! Madness.

And, just after 2pm, as promised, the Tescos van drew up with our shopping. That’s pretty damned impressive. Obviously, Tescos has a ready-made logistics and distribution network (eg. its stores all around the country) which makes this feat somewhat easier to manage than a traditional online business, but wouldn’t it be lovely if all big retailers could manage this?

One highlight of our time around an exceptionally busy Meadowhall was Aimee walking around the centre, holding my hand. She’s becoming more and more reluctant to idly sit in her pram, and likes to walk around holding our hands. I was as chuffed as hell walking down the busy covered ‘streets’ of Meadowhall, holding Aimee’s hand whilst she giggled madly, walking properly, like a little girl. We pick up a waking ‘harness’ for her from Mothercare, we’ll see what she’s like in it in the coming days. It’s amazing – every day that passes, she becomes more a little girl, and less a toddler. I can’t believe she’s only sixteen months old.

We get home and have a crack at Guitar Hero, Aimee’s knackered from all her walking – and it proves to be bloody good fun! I spend most of the evening thrashing out monster choons, only for Emma to have a go and completely decimate my high scores. Unbelievable. I thought I’d have a chance on a game like this – all the singing games, like Singstar, she just trounces everyone on, I thought this I might just have a chance with! Not so! Must practice.

On to the sat navs. The units themselves look very tidy, and are certainly less ‘fat’ than the TomTom devices I’ve used before. The finish on the units is remarkably good – especially for imported cheap Chinese sat navs. They come with a USB charger, fag lighter charger and window mount – everything you need, really.

The manuals are funny – written in Chinglish (“Navigator the whole World-wild”) and the software – the downright bizarrely titled ‘TurboDog’ is, well, awful. Thankfully I bought these fully in the knowledge that TomTom software would run on them.

Installing TomTom is a breeze – just copy a regular TomTom install from a Windows Mobile PDA onto the Navigo’s SD card and place a copy of your fully bought and paid for maps on the card too. It’s pretty much as easy as that. All that’s left to do is to rename the Tomtom installation folder on the SD card to ‘Mobilenavigator’, and the tomtom.exe to ‘mobilenavigator.exe’ and reboot. When you select the ‘Navigation’ option on the Navigo menu, it will fire up TomTom. The one last thing is to tell TomTom that your GPS device is an ‘Other NMEA GPS device’ on COM1/4800. No messing about with firmware or re-flashing required.

I understand that you can bugger about with these and reveal a full WindowsCE environment and install whatever you please, but I’m quite happy for mine to be a dedicated Sat Nav.