‘You asked for it,’ said the one on my left, swinging his bat at my head.

I dodged that one but his mate was also swinging and he caught me a glancing blow across my shoulders as I ducked.

I was in trouble, deep trouble.

‘Help!’ I shouted at the top of my voice, but without much hope, as I could hear the racing commentary rising to a crescendo as the bumper neared its finish.

‘Help!’ I shouted again and, to my great relief, and much surprise, help did arrive—and in the form of the cavalry.

Three supremely fit, if rather inebriated, young army officers dived straight into the fray, knocking both my assailants off their feet. The two men jumped up but they were now confronted not by one person but by four. For a few seconds, the six of us faced each other in a tableau that strangely reminded me of stories of the shootout at the O.K. Corral. But, on this occasion, thankfully, no one drew a gun.

Instead, the two in balaclavas wisely decided that the odds were no longer stacked in their favour, so they turned and ran, one of them even leaving behind his baseball bat.

‘Thank you,’ I said with feeling to the three young men.

‘No problem, Sid,’ one of them replied. ‘But what did they want?’

‘My car keys,’ I said, reckoning that their real purpose would require too much explanation. ‘They already broke my window.’ I gestured towards the Discovery and the pile of glass fragments lying on the grass next to it.

‘Bloody hooligans. Someone should lock them up.’

I agreed. ‘And throw away the key.’

We all laughed. Tension eased.

‘Can I offer you a lift?’ I asked.

‘Thank you, but we have our own car,’ replied one of them.

‘You’re surely not thinking of driving,’ I said. Each of them was at least three sheets to the wind, maybe as many as five.

He laughed. ‘Not likely. We have a driver to take us back to base.’ He indicated towards a Jaguar saloon parked just beyond my Discovery, with someone now getting out of it. The driver must have seen the whole confrontation between the masked men and me, but he had remained safely in his vehicle throughout. I couldn’t blame him. Only fearless army officers are prepared to get themselves involved to save others.

The three of them weaved their merry way across to the Jaguar and were driven away. I suddenly felt quite exposed without them, so I quickly picked up the discarded baseball bat, chucked it onto the back seat of the Discovery, climbed in and also drove away, setting my nose south towards Oxfordshire, cursing the fact that the driver’s door window was missing and I was in for a long, noisy and cold journey home.