I’ve just come back from a two week road trip across California. Very swanky, I hear you cry, but as we packed for the flight I’ll admit to a mild trepidation.

When we told people we were going to drive the Pacific Coast Highway they inevitably got the same look on their faces. A trace of alarm followed by a hastily pasted-on smile.

You see, my boyfriend and I don’t get on very well in cars. We don’t really argue, but driving anywhere is the one thing guaranteed to cause a ruckus.

Once, on holiday in France, we were trying to find our hotel in Toulouse. It was dark. I was driving (for some reason I always get the difficult bits) round a torturous one-way system.

He was navigating. The map said to drive down what looked like a dead end alley that didn’t look wide enough for a bike, let alone our hire car. There was shouting, quite a lot of swearing. In the end the map was right. Aren’t they always.

I like to triple check my directions. He likes to wing it. He’s got perfect vision, I wear glasses – which means he always sees the signs before me and gets annoyed when I have to ask him which way to go.

But it’s not always directions that cause the problem. You see, there’s a definite distinction between our driving styles.

I prefer to use my gears to slow down and leave quite a lot of space between me and the car in front, especially on motorways.

He likes to rely on his brakes for stopping purposes. Once he asked me why I was braking and I had to explain that I’d just taken my foot off the accelerator. He also has a habit of checking the sky for birds of prey whilst driving in the fast lane of the motorway.

This makes me nervous. Which leads to me poking his thigh in a dramatic fashion when I see the red lights of stopped traffic in front of us, which leads to conversations a bit like this (I’ve edited for tone and language): Me: Darling, do you think you could pay attention to the road?

Him: (slamming on the brakes) What? Goodness you scared me, that’s how you cause an accident, you know dear. I do have a 20-year unblemished driving record you know.

I should have known really. My family has never done well on long journeys. Four children in the back of a car are bound to squabble, and squabble we did (except for 20-minute interludes when we did an elaborate handclap routine to Riverdance).

And visions of my mum and dad standing on a motorway slip road screaming at each other because we’d gone the wrong way are seared on my brain. I’ve blocked out the horror of what they actually said but I’m pretty sure there was some shouting and the occasional swear word.

But in the end we needn’t have worried. Apart from a momentary lapse the first time we hit an eight-lane interstate there wasn’t a cross word spoken. More than that, I’ve returned as a bride-to-be. Our driving holiday, to quote the Californians, was awesome. Although I can’t promise I won’t be breathing in sharply the next time he spots a buzzard over the motorway...