Except where its morals are concerned.

I know what the driverless car would do for me. As soon as it saw me coming it would spit on its contrarotating-motivational sensors and, without moving its lips, mutter, ‘Right, guys, watch this.’ It turns in at the office happily enough then, gurgling with suppressed glee, plants itself in the Chairman’s parking space.

But enough of fantasy. And enough of the car. Think of yourself.

You. Getting into this driverless car. Switching on, settling back. You are moving out of the garage, turning onto the road, approaching the main road. By force of habit you look left, right and left again. Coming from the right is a car. You would have waited. But your car knows best and moves out. You’re safe, but for the next few minutes you feel your heart thudding.

If your imagination isn’t quite up to that, try remembering that time when, for the first time, your teenage son/daughter took you as passenger out onto the public highway. Ahead was a particularly wobbly cyclist. Sharp intake of breath? All muscles tensed?

Surely, no normal driver would be able to stand the strain. Consider again. You are sitting, powerless, as your car speeds towards a mother and child, the mother chatting with a friend, the child deciding to step into the road a few yards ahead of you. Or seeing a heavy truck emerging from a hidden side turning, your hands shooting out to grip the dashboard, your right foot punching a hole in the floor. You’d be in special care in a fortnight.

Driverless car, OK. But only fresh-faced16-year-olds need apply.

To read the background to these poems, open the page TREES.

To read the background to these poems, open the page 'TREES' in the right-hand column.

AREN'T YOU JUST sick of it? We live in a small village of houses ancient and modern and an 11th century church with a ring of eight bells. Lovely. But, walking the five hundred yards or so each morning to the paper shop at weekends and in school holidays, I see small children with their elder brothers and sisters come down the three steep steps from the shop busily trying to open their plastic-wrapped lollipops and, succeeding as they trail along (passing two rubbish bins as they go), they simply open fingers and thumb to let the plastic float down to the pavement.

We are in a little cul-de-sac of five houses. This morning the entrance was smothered in a disintegrated newspaper and a heap of bottles, cans, and household detritus. I suppose with a stretch of imagination you could say it could have been the freak result of overnight gales.

After all, nature does get nasty sometimes. During the night an 80ft tree came crashing down, missed our house by a right-angle and now lies, undeniably ugly in its non-vertical position, slap in the middle of the river. Disgusting.

To read the background to these poems, open the page 'TREES' in the right-hand column.

To read the background to these poems, open the page TREES.

To read the background to these poems, open the page TREES

It was the sort of bulb that has to be given time to consider whether or not it will provide sensible illumination. The sort that has to be treated like a newborn child - Never do this, Always do this, In the event of, and so on. And then I spotted a beauty. On a side of the box that was not filled by a photograph of the thing sitting inside I read:

NEVER

handle glass when

installing or removing.

Now, I ask you. How, without handling it, do you withdraw something that is 80% glass sitting snugly in a tightly-fitting pack, with its mass of glass uppermost? The only bit you can get hold of?

I really enjoyed that one. I sat holding the unopened box and looking at it, relishing the discovery. The stupid instruction to end all stupid instructions.

I opened it and saw, sitting on the bulb, a neatly-fitting cap of thin, white board to protect it from my touch. As I gingerly pulled it out I fancied I caught the spiral of white glass sneering at me.