"I am the passenger, and I ride and I ride and I ride"

If there's one question I resent, it's "Why don't you drive?"

It's always said in that tone of voice that implies you're a perverse freak with no grip on reality. "What do you mean, you can't drive? How on earth do you get about? Are you some kind of Luddite who spends his weekends smashing up factories and dreaming of a return to a mythical pre-Industrial Revolution agrarian idyll?"

Well, the reasons are fairly simple.

1. I've lived for the past seven years within 20 minutes walk of the centre of Nottingham, and now I live within two minutes of the centre of Birmingham. The public transport links in both cities are perfectly adequate, and I like to walk anyway - it's called "exercise".

2. I couldn't be doing with all the hassle of owning and running a car, even if I could afford one in the first place - parking, tax, insurance, repairs, MOT.

3. I don't have a job that absolutely necessitates driving (of which there are, I suspect, not that many).

4. I care about the environment, and by refusing to participate in the conspiracy that is traffic (phrase copyright Jean-Jacques Livereau, 'The Day Today') except when using public transport I feel I am doing my bit - unlike you, who are such a deluded autophile as to be surgically attached to your pride and joy and who are no doubt one of those millions of drivers who routinely travel negligible distances on your own and then fume about the density of the traffic.

That last one is the key - it turns the tables, making me into the smugly superior one perched atop the moral high ground. Plus it diverts attention away from the underlying fact that, at the age of nearly 27, I've failed my driving test twice and am yet to pass, and thus couldn't drive even if I wanted to...