Two things that puzzle me. Why is it that when you park in a practically empty car park someone always parks next to you? For instance, the other morning I stopped outside a supermarket very early and there wasn't a car in sight. When I came out somebody had parked so close to my car I practically had to do a limbo dance to get in. Why? Were they lonely?

And why is it that whenever you start to reverse out of any space somebody always suddenly walks behind you?

It happens without fail. Sit in your car, look around, and you won't see a single living soul for miles. Start the engine, move back an inch and an entire family of holidaymakers will appear behind your car and do a kind of indecisive shuffle accompanied by a glare. Who are they? Human lemmings?

Talking of parking. When I was in Carmarthen last year we were driving round a very busy car park looking for a space when a car up ahead backed out.

Hurrah, we thought, a space. But the car drove forward again, paused and then backed out again, only to move forward one more time and stop. We drove on, and my son said it must have been a woman driver. Which was very brave of him considering he was with his mother and two sisters. Then the exact same thing happened again with another car and we eventually had to drive off and find somewhere else to park.

We have since called this Carmarthen parking, although my sister-in-law solved the puzzle by telling me that apparently in that part of Wales you get fined if you don't park straight. A by-law which would catch one or two in Cornwall methinks.

Parking is a very emotive subject nowadays. Having spent years in local journalism I know you only have to mention car parking to bring about an instant and often fairly forceful reaction.

At one time this type of reaction was reserved for two other subjects - public lavatories and dog mess.

The former were either too few or closed entirely or dirty, or people wrote unlikely and unmentionable things on their walls both inside and out which annoyed local councils (my favourite bit of graffiti ever is totally unprintable but involved trout . . . )

The latter always caused us a bit of a headache in the editorial department because we didn't want to offend the sensibilities of readers. I think everyone has now settled on using the word 'mess' rather than the more correct name for the matter. Or the more usual terms which have to be firmly edited out.

But now it's parking - either the cost of it, the lack of it or in most cases people parking where they shouldn't.

We have had a recent spate of letters regarding people parking unlawfully in parent and child spaces. I can honestly claim never to have done this, mainly because it never occurs to me even when I have grandchildren on board. Now it does occur to me I may try it when I give my daughter a lift to the supermarket. After all I'm a parent and she will forever be a child. Even if she is thirtysomething.

Disabled parking is another cause of endless complaints, which is a pity because it was fought for long and hard over the years and now some people object to it. True, some bearers of disabled parking permits assume it confers invisibility on their vehicles and think it's fine to park in the middle of Bay Tree Hill, but most people are more thoughtful.

Not everyone agrees. I was once sent to interview a woman who had set herself up as a local village's watchdog for what she considered was unauthorised use of disabled parking permits.

She was given to spying on those who, according to her, leapt nimbly out of their cars and ran down the road like spring chicken and so obviously had no need of disabled parking. She had compiled photographs and long lists of people with not a limp between them and was sending her dossier to the county council and if they didn't act the Prime Minister was going to get it not long after. She was most annoyed that some holders of permits had lived in the village for only 'five minutes' (which to those of you who are new to Cornwall can mean anything from six months to 25 years).

'I can't get one, and I was born in the village', she said bitterly. Was she disabled? Well, no, but that wasn't the point.

My feeling about cars is that they are going to become the pariahs of the new millennium. Just as we smokers became the pariahs of the latter part of the last one.

Look at the evidence. There was a time when everyone smoked everywhere. People who didn't smoke used to apologise to those who did as though they had done something wrong.

'Sorry, I don't smoke, I've always had a bit of a chest', they'd say apologetically.

People smoked in cinemas and theatres, on buses and trains, in restaurants and at dinner parties where ashtrays were provided to match the rest of the china and glassware. School staffrooms were thick with smoke. Doctors smoked in their surgeries, surgeons were likely to lean over you and drop ash as they were operating. Nobody knew any better.

Now the world is full of smug people who think it's fine to snatch cigarettes out of your mouth and stamp on them, show you pictures of lungs over dinner and wave their arms about like a mad Dervish should they spot you smoking in your own garden.

And, come to that, full of airline companies who remove the smoking section on their aircraft and then wonder why the incidence of air rage has risen on long haul flights when all passengers can do is sit in cramped seats, chew through inedible food and read the in-flight magazine. I'm not supporting it, just mentioning it in passing.

I think cars are next. You may feel safe, but so did we.

I think within 20 years car drivers will be driving smaller and smaller cars so they can hide behind bushes and telegraph poles when they take that totally unnecessary drive to the shops instead of walking lest someone leaps out wearing a Friends of the Earth t-shirt and lectures them on wasting the world's precious resources.

Petrol prices will keep on rising so that we'll be buying it in jam jars and eventually the only people allowed to drive will be those with valid disabled stickers. The rest of us will be forced to walk or buy a bike.

And speaking for those of us who still smoke, I'm not looking forward to Merrymeet Hill on reduced lung capacity.