Thank you Adam but just resetting the idle revs using Steve M's excellent 'how to' seems to have given me a new car as well. (Thanks Steve)

(I changed the plugs as well because I'd bought some and if you're going to pull one out and look at it and you've got some new ones you may as well put them all in. The old ones (18 months old nearly) were okay - when I checked the old old cokey ones they were Champions and probably out of spec anyway. And by the way cloth head here found the plate saying 0.2% CO and 100ppm HC under the soundproofing on the 'parcel shelf'. It may be obvious but sometimes the frail need very careful helping.)

I'm pretty annoyed with 'garages' as a result though, for two reasons:

1. My car has always had a very low resting idle. Surely it's not rocket science when you're paying a main dealer a wad of cash for a service for them to look at this kind of thing?

2. Opening up the back flap to do all this stuff I found a rather nice - but placed rather inappropriately you might say - small mole grip resting on part of the engine. This following a main Honda dealer service a couple of months back (it wasn't there before - I look at the engine every six months or so whether I need to or not). I know I should go back and complain and raise hell about this but I just can't be bothered - I won't use them again and that's that.

But the potential implications of this are pretty awful. The nicest outcome is that there would have been a post on here saying 'something fell out of my engine bay and I can't see anything obvious that has dropped off help please!?'. But it could have damaged another car behind if it fell out or got caught up in the alternator / battery or other power connection / brakes to frightening effect.

When I bought my Beat I decided that after many happy, and even more frustrated bruised burnt mangled hours fixing my 'previous car' because of grotty service from garages, I was just going to get it serviced by a main dealer, pay through the nose, but it would all be all right.

Harumph