Last updated 14:34, Sunday, 10 February 2008

THIS week I am having a beef about driving.

It all started when I was trying to parallel park my car. Now, I am no Reginald Molehusband (remember him? - he used to demonstrate how to do said manoeuvre properly on one of those old fashioned public information films in which everyone spoke like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter) but given a space big enough to park Concorde, I can just about manage it.

On this occasion my task was made more difficult by a little old man who leapt from nowhere and started to wave and shout ‘back a bit . . . come on . . . a bit more . . . now right lock on . . .’ etc etc.

All this just made me flustered, because as well as trying to fit the car into the space, I had to try not to mow down my alleged helper.

If he could drive at all, he was probably one of those elderly men who are proud to say that they have been driving for 65 years but have never passed a driving test in their lives, having learned to drive in a tank in the Western Desert.

The trouble is, they still drive like that, and many of you will have come up behind them on the A66 when you are unable to overtake because they are driving in the middle of the road at 30mph.

In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that the car is driving itself, because you can scarcely see the flat cap above the level of the driver’s seat for the two large cushions and the picnic rug on the parcel shelf.

But there is a big difference between the way men and women drive.

When I park at the supermarket, I try to drive straight through into a space from which I can drive straight out - and so do most of my women acquaintances.

But do the men do that? No. They have to squeeze their vehicle - and the bigger the better - into the tiny space between the trolley park and the lamp standard, just to show that they can.