I drove up to our local service station at lunchtime to get a magazine and a bite to eat.

It was a sunny day but very windy. I rolled into a handy area of the car park where there were ten spaces and only two cars, and I parked and got out. There were people sitting in the cars, eating carefully, out of reach of the blustery air. Mrs Passenger in Blue Peugeot watched warily to see that the wind did not whisk my car door to touch hubby’s paintwork. It didn’t help that hubby had parked untidily over his own white line but I compensated by parking halfway into the next space. Mr Driver in Gunmetal Grey Rover, behind me, also gave me the frosty eye. There was a proprietorial chill about the place that had nothing to do with travelling speed of the Cumbrian air.

I was in the service station for maybe ten purposeful minutes. I checked that the piece I wanted to read was in that issue of the magazine and then bought my lunch. When I walked back to the car, Mrs Passenger was still casting sideways looks at my door. I reversed out of my space, well away from either Blue Peugeot or Grey Rover, and changed into first gear. I was starting to look forward to a peaceful lunch and a read, when someone blew a car horn.

I think it was Mr Rover who blew at me. I’m blest if know why.

It has bothered me all afternoon. It started bothering me as I left the car park.

I considered possible reasons for the salute. Perhaps my car needed some little attention that I hadn't noticed? My tyres weren’t bald or flat; I knew that because because I had them inspected by our local experts only two days before. The back lights all worked when I left home. Perhaps my white paintwork, unlike that of the stationary Blue and Grey families, was showing signs of living – shudder – in a country area where mud is a common occurrence?

My kindest guess was that Mr Rover was just clumsy in putting away his sandwich box and hit the horn by mistake.

I turned onto the C road for home, and it occurred to me that perhaps it was an excess of holiday spirit that prompted the signal. Once upon a time, when we English travelled by train or coach to our holiday destinations, we shared compartments, we shared seats, we made polite small talk and we helped with each other’s luggage. A honk on the horn in those days meant, “Hurry up, we're leaving in five minutes!” and might well have been delivered with  cheerful, hi-tiddley-eye-ti bravura. But a single honk is not a fantasia.

Halfway down the hill I worried at it a bit more. I didn’t think a businessman would have even have looked up as I arrived or left; he’d have been eating, noting client details, checking his maps and probably conferring by phone. A working wagon driver (I’m married to one) would be making the most of his compulsory break and he would either have winked at me or gone on drinking his tea and  reading his newspaper. But you can’t tell me that Mr and Mrs Peugeot or Mr and Mrs Rover are doing business or taking a tacho break as they sit lunching on a Wednesday in the middle of nowhere, just off the M6 in the Lake District. Was it just lack of occupation that turned their attention to me? Or boredom with a spouse's eating habits? Those fish-eye looks in the car park told nothing except non-connection.

I hadn’t – to my knowledge – done anything to deserve a honk. When I drive foolishly or take a risk, it’s rare but I usually know it, and any honks I get then are deserved and accepted. No; by the time I’d turned in at my gate I had convinced myself that car drivers, isolated in their little snail shells, are a touchy lot. Going on holiday or not, they assume the right to look at the views, patronise the locals, and still command their own ten cubic yards of private air space and a buffer zone beyond. The shift from communal travel to car-based independence and isolation hasn’t done a lot for tolerance, I decided; it’s just made people even more aggressive and stupid than they already were.

I parked the car. I picked up my goods and got out, and held the sandwich out of range of the dog’s delighted greeting.

Drivers, I grumbled to myself, shout at other drivers who correctly assert their right to move with the main traffic flow instead of stopping to let them out of a junction. Drivers gesture at others driving in front of them and they tailgate  the more timid for refusing to be hustled to faster speeds than they can control.

Ignoring the dog, I went down the steep, uneven steps to the back door and let myself in, still chewing on my discomfort. Car drivers overtake other cars in silly places, just to end up at the next traffic lights one place ahead. They don't seem to recognise that the main concern at seventy miles an hour should be to control the big tin box, because they're only a few feet away from other tin boxes travelling at the same or even faster speed.

Car drivers sit in cocoons, glaring or hooting at imagined competition.

I’d gone out to buy lunch and entertainment for the intellect, but when I sat down at the table I was unable to taste either the food or the words.