TO SAY I’m not good with relationships would be to say the A34 is sometimes a little bit on the busy side. Alongside my morbid obesity, I have various other questionable personal habits. It will not surprise you to learn that at present I am not stepping out with anyone.

My last girlfriend cited my inability to eat with my mouth closed as one of a whole litany of things that had pushed me beyond the pale.

It was probably for the best. Her little foibles had begun to surface, particularly her insistence on us only eating at a well-known but rather ‘lowbrow’ establishment.

I was constantly telling her that our fellow diners were exactly the kind of people who spoke with their mouth full. She didn’t buy my argument. Well she couldn’t hear what I was saying, my words competing with the double cheese whapamacpounder I was eating at the time.

I should have realised it wasn’t going to work from our first date. At the time I was using the car I had learnt to drive in; the one which had guided through those formative years.

She and I had shared such happy memories. I called the car Lucy. She was a pale white Clio, she reminded me of a girl I used to know. She also had a wayward exhaust. I was happy to admit she had seen better days. The car not the girl.

She had also been subjected to a break-in the previous year. It had meant that the lock on the driver’s side had stopped functioning.

Then about three weeks before our first date I had managed to snap the key to the passenger side door. In keeping with her steadfastly unhelpful outlook – the car again not the girl – the door jammed locked.

The only serviceable entrance became the boot. It became a fairly common sight in my part of Oxfordshire to see me clambering through the back of Lucy to get to my seat.

I didn’t often have a call for passengers and when I did they were friends and relatives, not people I wanted to impress.

Although my gran was a little put out on the one occasion my sister couldn’t pick her up for our family’s traditional Friday night dinner.

Anyway I had, as is a common thread in my life, not really thought through the consequences of agreeing to pick up my date from her place on our first date.

I had taken care over my appearance and had booked a suitably impressive restaurant (utterly wasted, but who knew). What I had forgotten was that however impressive any of it was the only way we were getting into my car was through the boot.

She was not impressed. The girl not the car.

I worked very hard on the journey to the stylish eatery I had booked. We giggled about how quirky it was to enter a car by the boot. She seemed won over. Until I insisted in dropping her off right outside the restaurant.

Parking in Oxford is after all such a trial. I was being a gentleman, saving her the walk in the cold!

Out she clambered in front of all the diners before I drove off to find a place to park.

I knew from then she had to go. The car, not the girl.