THE other day I returned to my car, parked in a public car park, to find a slight problem. The car was wedged so tightly between two 4x4s that getting into it looked impossible.

I had parked by a 4x4, on my offside. While I had been away another 4x4 had occupied the slot on the driver's side. The easiest way into my car now would have been via the boot, but this doesn't unlock independently of the doors.

Somehow miniaturising myself, I did succeed in squeezing in on the offside and clambering over the passenger seat and gear stick. Fond memories of the contortions of courting days (or rather nights) of long ago didn't quite erase my irritation as I drove out from the narrow canyon formed by the two towering vehicles. Until one of them left, the parking space I vacated was virtually useless.

How many people who drive these monsters, well nicknamed urban tanks, really need them? The question has particular relevance since the Government has just admitted it is likely to fall well short of its 2010 target for cutting so-called "greenhouse" gases, responsible for global warming.

Notorious gas guzzlers, the 4x4s are not only greedy of road space and parking space but consume more energy and resources in their production than smaller vehicles. The present road tax advantage enjoyed by small cars was achieved by lowering their tax. The trend to larger cars will be reversed only by sharply upping their tax. Pollution apart, a priceless benefit would be a reduction in deaths and serious injuries to children, since the 4x4s are far more lethal than conventional cars.

But, of course, global warming has other villains than the 4x4s. Few worse than aircraft. Yet on the day the Government conceded "slippage" in its greenhouse-gas target, Richard Branson announced a price war on flights to Australia.

Cheap air travel is now taken for granted. Any political move that threatened this would no doubt be a vote loser. But the political parties should make a common commitment to phase out the hidden subsidies for air travel, notably the exemption from fuel duty and VAT on planes, over an agreed period, perhaps ten years. If, at the end of that time, fewer people can afford to fly to Malaga or Tenerife - tough. At some point we are going to have to face up to what is necessary to save our world.

UNACCOUNTABLY absent from the quotations I listed here last week, as favourites that give me handles on life, was the wisest thought of the lot. Thanks to a "reminder" from my wife, I am happy to make good my omission. Engraved on a lintel at Lastingham in the North York Moors: The hap of a life - good or ill - the choyce of a wife.

In an example of trying too hard, the Dean and Chapter of York Minster have chosen to floodlight the cathedral's majestic west front over the Christmas period in ever-changing colour, on to which are projected huge images of snowflakes. It's restless. You can't beat plain white.