Years ago I owned a Porsche 911. It was black with red leather interior and as soon as I turned on the engine you could hear it yearning for Malcolm Campbell and land speed records. Modern cars are so self-driven that if you point them in the right direction they get you there. The Porsche needed driving. Male heads would turn to look at it and female eyes would narrow in satisfying jealousy. After years of sensible, utilitarian cars it should have been a joy to own. It was a nightmare. Vandals were drawn to it like WAGs to footballers, one even scraping his name on the pristine bodywork, the police took a regular interest in it – 'you were driving unnaturally slowly for a Porsche driver, madam' – and every other motorist saw it as a challenge. Servicing consumed my income.

I mention this because my grumpy view of people's driving might well attract accusations of jealousy now that I drive an innocuous Toyota. Since our return from Portugal we have noticed many changes. Wealthy Old Etonians are ruling the country again and making cuts to poor people's lives, semi-literate boys and untalented girls who once kicked a football or sang a song on television have overthrown Royalty, clothes are incredibly cheap but people are scruffier than ever, London is clean (well the bits I go to are) and Anne Widdicombe has completely lost the plot. But nothing has changed for the worse so much as people's driving. Perfectly civilised people, who one would have in one's drawing room, become quite mad when faced by that stretch of road between Tetbury and Cirencester. Am I the only person to have spotted that there is a 40mph speed limit outside Ilsom House? Or that there is a roundabout in the centre of Tetbury? It isn't just boy-racers who shriek past. It's more often young women with 'baby on board' signs and what am I supposed to do about that sign when the safety of said infant seems to matter so little? But worst of all are the ageing ladies being driven in large cars by their husbands. They look across piteously at me as their husband squeezes their car into the safe distance I have carefully left between me and the car in front.

Stirling Moss, himself an ageing driver, is supporting the campaign for older drivers to have to be retested. So am I.