Whichever way you slice it you have to accept that driving in this city of ours will never be a pleasure again.

Even before the current price horrors inflicted on us by the oil-producing nations it was becoming painful to drive round London and I found myself getting more and more short-tempered and angry.

This week I decided to do without the car.

I confess that the motive was not wholly noble as my LPG-fuelled Vauxhall Astra was in the safe hands of "Fast Eddie" Willson and his skilled crew of mechanical geniuses but I could have had a hire car or even borrowed one.

Instead I set off each morning to stroll from Hanwell to Ealing Broadway and then to ride the District Line to Westminster.

If the weather was too awful I could catch an E1 to Ealing but even after a few days I was coming to treasure the chance to see things that I would normally whizz past and there was the added advantage of being able to take phone calls without attracting the attention of the constabulary.

The tube has improved immeasurably. Clean, reasonably priced and far more frequent than it used to be. Station access could be better and I could do without the mobile advice surgeries that I had to conduct as people came and sat next to me and pushed my paper to one side in order to engage me in conversation.

All in all it's been a surprisingly pleasant experience, though I haven't cracked the problem of getting back home after the last District Line leaves at midnight or how to get back and forth from distant parts of Northolt and Greenford during the day.

I think I'll give it a try though as I just don't fancy getting back into the road rage world.