"Would you like your bus wrapping, Sir?"

This afternoon we went to collect our new bus. We'd found the type we wanted on Monday at a garage in Raffsburgh. I'd envisaged driving it home then and there, so I was a little perplexed when the sales chap asked if I wanted it wrapping.

"Pardon?" I asked.

I had a mental image of a huge roll of wrapping paper about 10 metres wide, and wondered if they'd leave a gap so I could see out of the windscreen.

Maureen explained gently that the garage had a vehicle branding service, and that a vehicle wrap could be either full or partial and referred to graphics.

I was still trying to get my neck round this idea, when our eldest daughter Nexi shrieked, "Graphics! Of course - I'll design it! I can do it at college, based on the logo I've created for the business. It'll look fab running in a strip along the side of the bus."

By now I'd seen the light and said I rather fancied the full bus wrap. We could have the logo, 'Giraffe World Tours', surrounded by stars and planets swirling all over the bus. (Guess who has been looking through his wonderful new telescope!)

Nexi threw up her hands in horror and explained witheringly that the whole point of vehicle signage was so that people would notice the name of the business as we drove by, and that we ought to look like a tours company, not a mobile astronomical observatory.

I was rather taken with the observatory idea, and suggested that we get a second bus specializing in astronomy tours.

Nexi turned her back on me and told the by-now-thoroughly-confused salesman that she'd send a file with the artwork and could the bus be ready to collect on Friday please?

So there we were this afternoon, and I have to say that Nexi's design looked superb.

Both Maureen and I got our PGV (Passenger Giraffe Vehicle) licences a few weeks ago, so we tossed a coin to see who would drive the bus home. I called 'Necks Up', and it was, so I did!