I have mentioned the shock of seeing Watford’s traffic but I had to seek assurances that I had not become an old buffer, making hesitant, dawdling progress round the locality early last month. I have been frustrated by dodderers in the past but had I become one, I wondered?

On the Friday evening, I left Sarratt and headed for Chesham, via the outskirts of Bovingdon.

I had an appointment to meet up with two friends at a Chesham pub before heading for the Papad Indian restaurant where they offer some excellent and varied Indian fare. Originally I thought the pub he had named was one where they serve real ale and there is a Thai restaurant attached, but he had corrected me and assured me it was one on Ley Hill, above Chesham.

Now, when work was over, I was only too keen to get back home, although in latter years I made it a more reflective journey as I ran through what I had done and had to do the next day. The route to Chesham is not a major artery but I was washed along those lanes like a storm-tossed cork, pressed by traffic speeding up behind me.

I reached Chesham and completed a loop round a roundabout to get back up the other side of the dual-carriageway and turn off to the left. I felt daunted by the whole pace of it; the fact people seemed to be attacking the exit from all angles and at speed.

I am familiar with tail-gating French motorists who seem determined to benefit from your slipstream, but I found Chesham intimidating. The traffic was free-flowing and that was the problem. The speed of it caught me by surprise.

Am I getting old, I asked myself. Remember when you first drove into Paris at 5pm on a Friday evening, or became familiar with the madmen in Naples who brought a new angle to queuing at traffic lights, plus all those innumerable scooters. Is this the same man who hammered up and down and across the motorways of the UK to football matches?

I was talking the experience over with my son-in-law Marc later, when he was filling me in on his Superman rescue of a girl in an overturned car. He assured me that although he is the wrong side of 50, as a regular commuter from Brackley to Watford down the major roads, he too found the speed of drivers quite eyebrow-raising.

What is he on about, you might ask? But I humbly suggest it is part of your everyday life and you are familiar with it. Coming from another country, where so many seem to religiously obey the speed limits, it is a bit of an eye-opener. Maybe I will be part of the speeding gang after coming over for a fortnight this Christmas.

I made it to the pub, could not find my friends and phoned them. I held my hands up. It was another attack of short-term memory loss. It was not the pub I had originally thought it was. I was supposed to meet them at the pub in Ley Hill. I heard it being explained down the phone, feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. I had been corrected before but it had gone in one ear and out the other, lightly brushing the memory bank.

The irony was that I had no need to have experienced the drag race through central Chesham. It was nice out in the country, above the town, and I was grateful for a pint: after I had found somewhere to park my car that is; there were so many cars already parked.

I have always been surprised by the traffic and the delays upon returning to the UK but my oldest (as in long-serving) friend was celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Cotswolds.

We talked over the phone about how, as cub reporters, we had gone to see old people and asked them what their recipe was for a long and happy marriage. We used to get through one of those interviews a fortnight when we were juniors: so many years ago; never thinking we would get old.

During the course of their trip, they took my tip and popped into Bladon to see Winston Churchill’s grave in early November. They expected queues but found themselves alone standing in that small country churchyard before an amazingly simple grave. He was moved by the experience having been educated long before the sickening modern trend to try and airbrush him from the school history curriculum.

One of the secrets of a long marriage is to let Her Indoors indulge in some retail therapy, so, as they were near Bicester Retail Park, they headed there and arrived to find the car parks full. They opted for park-and-ride, reached the park and spent around 12 minutes there. There were queues outside every shop. They caught the bus back to their car and decided to give it a miss.

Last weekend we travelled to Carcassonne to pick up our friends – the only English in the two villages of some 3,000 people. They had been back to Kent for a pre-Christmas visit with their family and emailed to confirm their flight and the fact they were looking forward to getting back to France. They had enjoyed their visit but... the crowds and the traffic were too much.

My own retail therapy was limited to the Harlequin Centre. I arrived there early enough, parked up, turned my shopping round in 90 minutes, which included some browsing, and then headed out, proving it is possible to achieve such ventures relatively pain-free, but I had to put off visiting The Pond in its new incarnation. By the time I had the space in my schedule to do so, I could not face the traffic... again.

Maybe I am getting old.