Car boredom

British drivers tend to spend a lot of time in their cars, going nowhere. The same is true in many parts of the world for people who need to drive to get to and from work, or to carry out daily chores.

In-car entertainment systems can help alleviate the boredom of being stuck in traffic; switching between radio stations, changing CDs, even trying a good old cassette. But soon the novelty wears off and the poor, trapped motorist's attention drifts again. They become tetchy and irritable - this can be made worse if the weather's particularly hot, or the driver needs to go toilet (just ask Trillion about last Monday when Coldplay were on a the footie stadium that she passes on her way home).

But what other things can a person do when they're stuck behind the wheel? This is what I find myself doing:

• Option one is always phone Trillion. A (hands-free) conversation can help keep you awake and you can also establish your relative positions in the traffic (we share part of the route home). If you find that you're relatively close (a few cars away) you can turn your stereo up and have a sing song through the traffic without even needing the phone.
• Repeatedly squirt screenwash. Can't help it. I don't know whether it's an addiction to the smell of the solvent or what.
• Wipe dust off dashboard with an index finger.
• Check car is in neutral - over and over again.
• Use eye lasers to vaporise cars ahead of you in the queue.
• Play with trip computer. You can see how many miles you done on that tank of petrol, how many miles you've got left, how long you've been driving on that tank/trip, what your fuel consumption is and also your average speed. Brilliant. Watch in despair as your fuel consumption plummets from 35mpg to about 28mpg over the course of your journey home.
• Pelvic floor exercises. Well, not really, but this all depends on how full your bladder is - the discomfort is psychosomatic and is inversely proportional to your speed.
• Play with stereo settings. How much bass, loudness and volume can you have before the speakers blow up?
• If all these fail to relieve the bordeom, go for ROAD RAGE. There's nothing like getting involved in a bit of argy-bargy to take your mind off the fact that you haven't moved in 20 minutes. This gives the driver the opportunity to use their full vocabulary of "colourful" language.

Motoring irritations
These aren't irritations that are inflicted on motorists by their fellow road users. I'm referring to things about your own car that drive you to distraction.

• Squeaky, streaky windscreen wipers.
• Idiopathic rattles: you'll be driving along there'll be something unidentifiable rattling or squeaking, just generally making an irritating noise somewhere inside the car.
• Indicator switches - do they have to be so loud?
• Speaker distortion - my own fault, that one.
• "Devil in my car" stereo: the cleverer car stereos get, the more things that go wrong with them. Mine has this thing that increases the volume the faster I go. Brilliant! But it sometimes changes the volume, up and down, for no reason whatsoever. The traffic bulletins often kill the CD too.

Of course, left hand drive cars and North American models may have different problems associated with them...