For the first time since passing my test over 40 years ago I have been banned from driving. Sort of. I’m still not clear whether I was technically allowed to drive, but in the event the legalities were really neither here nor there: I couldn’t drive and that was the end of it. My crime? To try to stop my dog running into the road by grabbing him around the collar, for which efforts I was rewarded with a finger so badly broken it required me to be out cold on an operating table for over
