I AM not a jealous person. I try really hard to avoid even the subtlest hint of envy. But every Sunday morning I suffer the most terrible pangs of desire.

So much so, in fact, that I can barely lift my head from The Sunday Times for more than a few seconds at a time.

The rugby club car park has a lot to answer for, and I find myself there most Sundays parked up with other parents of enthusiastic rugby boys watching our little darlings get pummelled and battered and covered in mud.

Sunday mornings at rugby give me the chance to catch up with a very good journalist friend of mine and also retreat to the safety of my car with the papers, a take-out coffee and The Archers.

But...and it’s a big but...I often find my trusty Ford Focus surrounded by a battalion of really rather nice motors, and it’s all getting a bit out of hand.

Last Sunday, as I trundled down the gravel drive, I passed potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of Mercedes, Jags, BMWs, Porsches, those massive Animal trucks, countless 4x4s (mostly spotlessly clean) and a couple of very tasty little sporty numbers.

It was almost as if they (or their very well-turned-out owners) were tut-tutting and whispering to each other about how grubby and common my car was, so I quickly found a suitable spot, reversed in, and felt that I was trying to retreat into the camouflage of the undergrowth so that the posh cars would just stop being so mean!

I know it’s ridiculous, but I have started to get just a little bit embarrassed about my wheels. I had a big plan, you see, that by 43 (which I nearly am) I would be driving some fabulous Mercedes sports car and, to be honest, I feel a bit cheated.

Okay, so there is no way that a fat black Labrador, two enormous children and a week’s shopping would fit into a sleek convertible sports car, but that doesn’t stop me looking wistfully at the lovely cars on either side and muttering under my breath.

I did notice that nobody wanted to actually park either side of me at the most recent match – I was ignored like I had some nasty disease, or maybe it was the fact that I was singing loudly to Barry Manilow and they just thought it safer to keep their distance.