The modern couple, working in the countryside...

Yesterday, with the kids safely installed in school and our rural internet on the blink again, Tom and I decided to be very modern, and do a bit of work from our favourite cafe in town.

Amazingly (for it was market day and so very busy) there was a space between two cars right outside the cafe. Tom confidently pulled up alongside the car he was going to park behind, and told me that if there was one thing he could do in this world, it was reverse park.

I was quick to tell him that he was not close enough to the parked car, to be able to reverse in tight next to the kerb.  He laughed at me and told me I was deliberately trying to put him off, and again told me of his reverse parking expertise.

So he dramatically, and a little bit cockily, began backing into the space.  He got half way in and suddenly stopped, announcing that the space was too small.  I told him it wasn't.  He asked me to get out and watch he didn't bash the car behind.

Meanwhile the 17 year old boy-racer who works in the butchers shop opposite was standing outside having a fag, and staring.

Tom finally got into the space without hitting any cars, and as proud as punch, he turned the engine off.  But he was a good metre from the kerb.  And he was genuinely surprised when I pointed this out to him.

So he turned the engine back on, and after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and holding up lorries and farm vehicles, he once again turned the engine off, convinced he had executed the perfect reverse park manoeuvre.  He was exactly parallel with the kerb, but was now a metre and a half away from it.

The boy-racer was still standing there, but now he had his boss next to him, both smirking.

Feeling that our family honour was at stake, I shouted through the window for Tom to get out and that I would park the bloody car myself.

I jumped in, revved the engine in a boy-racer-esque manner (to show the butchers that I knew what I was doing) and hastily accelerated out of the space.

As I was doing so, I loudly scraped the side of our car against a nearby post. And as if I hadn't noticed, Tom called through the window, telling me I'd just scraped the car, a little too breezily for my liking.

By then, queues of cars had gathered in both directions. I yelled at Tom to get in - he uselessly called out: 'What? Into the car?'   A farmer then approached, carrying a sheepdog under his arm, and asked if we needed help.

We were both crippled with embarrassment at this point.  In his haste to get in quickly, Tom sat on my iPad.

I (accidentally) did a little wheel spin as I drove off far away from that space, and the post I had just scraped, and the gawping butchers.  We went to the big empty car park instead (where we parked with ease) to assess the damage.  Then we decided to drive home.