Cramp can be agonising. I remember my first bout. I was about 13 and had been playing tennis for hours on end in the heat of midsummer. Travelling home that evening, sandwiched between two large boys on the back seat of a mini, I suddenly began howling, screaming out in great whoops of excruciating pain.

It felt like my thigh muscle had suddenly and spasmodically become wrenched from my bone. Looking back on it now, I see there were three significant problems. First, I had cramp. Second, I'd never had it before and thought that something was seriously, perhaps fatally, wrong. Third, I was in the rear seat of a tiny little mini on a motorway with no immediate prospect of getting out, stretching my legs and enjoying some pain relief.

It may sound melodramatic, but it really was one of those formative and traumatic experiences that mark, nay scar, our childhood. To this day, if someone tells me they have or have had cramp, I cannot help but hyperempathise to what must seem an insane degree.

This is why I can almost (and I say almost) understand the actions of a South Yorkshire motorist who was recently prosecuted for driving with one of his legs hanging out the window after suddenly being afflicted with "agonising cramp".

Although the driver avoided a prison sentence for his reckless act, he was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

The prosecutor in the case explains what police saw, "He was driving along the third lane or fast lane at 70mph. He appeared to be sat very low in his seat as though he was reclining backwards," he said.
"The officers saw part of his right leg and foot sticking out of the driver's window. As he went along the brake lights of his vehicle came on.

"He clearly touched the controls with his left foot because his right foot was still through the driver's window."
"It is not the sort of activity which is conducive to road safety," said the judge. Nor is it, I imagine, the kind of act that is conducive to getting a cheap car insurance quote.

Image © waldo_swiegers, via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

This week many news outlets carried a story about a learner driver from Oxford who managed to flip her instructor's car on only her second lesson; a "freak incident" that won't exactly fill her with confidence for her future as a motorist.

As so much of learning to drive is about confidence, as I know from bitter experience, I can't help but fear the worst for the poor woman involved.

It was on only my first foray onto the road that I was very nearly side-swiped by a speeding motorist who was recklessly fleeing from police pursuit. The incident set me back a long way and to this day I maintain that it delayed me taking my test by around six months.

But then my family has history when it comes to driving tests and driving lessons. My mother, never the most reassuring of drivers, gave up driving when I was not yet ten. But this was not before she'd mounted curbs, ploughed into hedges and reversed into several trees. Very early on in life my sisters and I were conditioned to believe that even the shortest of drives would inevitably result in a near-death experience.

Some years later, my maternal grandmother told me that my mother had only succeeded in passing her test (at the 12th time of asking) because the examiner, a superstitious fellow and friend of my grandmother's, had decided not risk his luck on a 13th attempt. "I'm not getting in a car with her again. She's passed," he's reputed to have said.

Then there is my sister. She failed her driving test after swerving into a ditch in order to avoid colliding with an Adonis Blue butterfly.

I'm just grateful that familial driving history plays no part in calculating the price of a motor insurance policy.

Image © Pengannel via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

In recent weeks far too many column inches have been occupied by prurient reportage of and speculation about the intimate lives of two of England's leading footballers.

And the intrigue hasn't just confined itself to the tittle-tattle pages of the redtops and the celebrity segments of some of the frothier news programmes. In fact, questions of footballers' seemingly rampant infidelity have also occupied the airwaves on Radio 4, on The Andrew Marr Show and, believe it or not, for a good ten minutes of Question Time.

I, for one, am beginning to get really bored by newspaper stories concerning themselves with the overactive love-lives of John Terry and Ashley Cole.

Let's forget for a minute that they are men, although that obviously plays a part, and ponder a minute what most people their age, 29, are actually doing and ask ourselves the question, is their behaviour actually any different from the norm?

I've got many friends, male and female, who, their romantic aspirations shattered by the countless divorces of their parents' generations, flit from partner to partner, fling to fling and infidelity to infidelity.

Although I have to question the class and integrity of anyone who is willing to sell details of their celebrity tryst to a newspaper, and by proxy the celebrity who became involved with them in the first place, I can't help but feel that such stories should never be news.

Why on earth should Footballer Has Fling or Twentysomething Cheats on Partner actually be considered newsworthy, even if it is, in the case of John Terry, with the ex-girlfriend of a teammate? This mateship factor is hardly interesting either, most infidelities involve complex and intimate webs of relationships.

If the media want a Man Bites Dog story, they could do worse than look at Paul Scholes, a footballer who in this age of shag-happy celebrity players, is "shy", "unassuming", married, a father-of-three and, by all accounts, faithful.

Perhaps it doesn't set the pulse racing, but the front pages could do worse than carry the headline Scholes Stays In with an accompanying story detailing how his ideal day is to, "Train in the morning, pick up the kids from school, play with them, have tea, get them to bed and then watch a bit of TV."

Image © Crystian Cruz via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

Yesterday I was stuck in the ubiquitous, wet, heaving, horn-happy traffic jam when, knowing I would not be moving anywhere soon, I took to a bit of distracted people gazing.

In the car beside me, impervious to my gaze, sat the most incredibly handsome man. Spellbound, by his Cary Grant-like good looks, I fell into delicious reverie, imagining that I, looking uncannily like Ingrid Bergman, was standing elegantly in his glamorous drawing room drinking a pre-opera martini.

Absorbed by this daydream, I slowly became aware that my filmic vision was in reality merely grafted onto a quite grisly scene. My Cary was picking his nose. Not just, discreetly, around the rim, but fervently, his ferreting finger pulling out thick, viscous matter and wiping it in great sliming trails against his steering wheel.

It was horrible, and although I know he's quite entitled to do this, after all it isn't yet against the law, he did ruin my rather swooning and soothing mirage, rudely cracking open my innermost traffic jam coping mechanisms. If I want to see a man gormlessly picking his nose, I'll go home and try not to look at my husband.

I was so angry with him that I found myself segueing into another daydream, which saw Cary being spotted by police and unceremoniously pulled out his car and being marched off to the station, charged with pick-driving.

17% of us do it, apparently, pick our noses while we're driving and, like I said earlier, it is not yet a criminal offence. A couple of motorists have been fined for blowing their noses while driving though, so there's hope yet...

Image © Cliff1066 via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

Although comical to some, a spillage of beer on the M20 near Folkestone in Kent was not amusing to motorists affected by the hour long delays the incident caused.

The HGV carrying the beer overturned at around 8am, throwing cans of Carlsberg and Budweiser across the road between junctions 12 and 13 of the motorway.

While I'm sure many of the waiting motorists would have been happy to assist the authorities with ridding the road of beer cans, unfortunately for them, they were instead made to wait while the proper authorities returned the cans to the lorry.

No doubt there will be several motorists returning to the scene to see if they can find a couple of cans that were missed.

[Image © gfpeck via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence]

If he were human he would be slapped with an ASBO, but as he's a dolphin, Moko the male bottlenose is able to get away with his anti-social behaviour.

Locally renowned on his home shore of New Zealand's North Island as being a bit of a yob, the unfriendly dolphin likes nothing more than stealing surfboards and body slamming humans.

His unfriendly antics have led to several bathers and surfers having to call for the help of life guards as the dolphin has left them stranded out at sea and prevented from returning to shore.

However, the petulant porpoise was sent swimming by one fed up canoeist who hit the dolphin with her canoe oar when he tried to attack her.

As it is an offence to harm dolphins under New Zealand law, the woman could face a fine of up to £113,000 if she is found guilty of striking the dolphin.

Marine scientists are attributing the dolphin's naughty behaviour to that of a "very lonely dolphin who loves human contact but is getting way too big and strong for it."

Rather than looking for car insurance, bathers in the area may have to think about taking out dolphin insurance to protect themselves from such a dolphin attack.

[Image © pinhole via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence]

Shopping around for a car insurance quote but can't find one cheap enough? You're not alone. And, for that matter, what's cheap enough? Would you, ideally, like to spend nothing at all?

If the answer's yes, then, you would think, environmentalists would say catch the bus instead;  you don't have to spend a penny on your premium, get to catch up on world affairs, listen to your iPod or do some serious reading while you travel - who knows, you might even find yourself sitting next to the person who'll become the love of your life - all while helping save the world by reducing your carbon footprint, right?

Well, wrong. The answer to the question is actually so entwined with mind-boggling variables that it places us all at the bewildering centre of a complex moral maze.

The answer would be beautifully simple, if only, yes, if only we were all catching buses that were running at capacity.

But as it is, the average UK bus only carries nine passengers; meaning that, per person, a car carrying two people actually has less of a carbon footprint than the typical bus. Even in London, our great bustling capital, the average bus carries only thirteen passengers.

And, although you might think this would at least settle the question for those travelling in groups of two or more in areas where buses are usually low on passengers, think again.

The bus is already running, so it is therefore the utilitarian option:  you may not be reducing your personal carbon footprint, but you'll be reducing that of the world, however infinitesimally.

But by using the same argument with planes, the scale and complexity of the moral maze just intensifies. The plane is already running, right, so what's the harm in getting it?

Come Monday morning and faced with question of whether I'm going to catch the bus or drive to work - it's too far for me to walk and too dangerous a route to cycle - I think I might just sit at the breakfast table, staring blankly ahead, paralysed by the this grave and knotted moral question. I just hope the boss understands...

Image © markhillary via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence