Driving

1. Red Van Man. A dishevelled prehistoric species who looms up without warning in your rear-view mirror and gesticulates wildly at you to get out of the way.

2. White Van Man. The same as Red Van Man, only worse.

3. When you pull smartly up to the Banklink machine - only to find that your arms are six inches too short to reach the damned thing.

4. That awful sinking feeling when you realise that the car behind you which has been flashing its lights for the past 20 minutes contains, not a speed freak who wants you to pull on to the hard shoulder and let him pass, but a couple of speed cops who want you to pull on to the hard shoulder and hand over fifty quid.

5. 4x4s driven by designers which pull insolently up on your right at a junction where you're innocently trying to turn left and block your view.

6. 4x4s driven by the original 4x4 drivers: farmers who don't care how long it takes to get to wherever they're going, as long as it's before the season changes.

7. 4x4s, full stop. The uneatable at the wheel of the unspeakable.

8. Magic roundabouts. You know, the ones which exert a mysterious magnetic pull on indicator bulbs, causing vehicles to blink innocuously to the effect that they're turning right as they wheel merrily to the left, or vice-versa.

9. Driving in Dublin. The hooting, the obscene gestures, the sheer, heart-stopping terror of it all.

10. Driving outside Dublin. The wide-open spaces, the eerie quietness, the absence of anybody shouting at you or shaking their fists: it can't be natural, surely? Stillorgan dual carriageway, here I come...