But the hole in the gateway had to be left three days in case something leaked. No problem. Taking the car out before they started digging and leaving it overnight by the roadside was something we had never done before, but others do it all the time.

In fact hundreds of them do it since double yellow lines were introduced at the bottom of our street recently. Quite right too. Commuters heading for the train, either reluctant to pay or finding the station car park full, had made that junction a nightmare. Nose-to-tail vehicles also often prevented those living in the bottom half of the street, with no off-road parking, getting close to their own house. They deserved a break.

But the toothpaste-tube effect squeezed parking further up. Our previously quiet section of road is now a single-track motoring slalom with cars parked erratically on both sides. Some park for days at a time as their owners take the train to work away from home.

Years of driving and trying to park in Edinburgh mean that I don't complain – much. I'm partially sympathetic to anyone desperate to leave a car and get to work, even if at least some could surely find space at the station and more could use the main town park. But that would mean walking at least 200 yards further than leaving a car almost blocking our gateway.

So we're stuck with a situation not unusual in a country with 30 million vehicles. Nor will it be a police matter until, presumably, someone is killed.

So far, so annoying, and I noted the irony when to avoid being blocked in for three days I parked our car by the roadside. Next morning someone – I put it no more strongly – had smashed our windscreen. Not only that, they had used one of the stones from the hole dug by the water board.

Now that, I said, as I tried to get Liz to see the funny side, was ironic.

Hundreds of cars park regularly on our street, many for days at a time, many badly, without getting a mark on them. We leave ours for one night and find ourselves dialling Autoglass on a Sunday morning, reflecting that the excess insurance charge will take care of most of this year's water bill saving.

Over the same 24 hours our phones and e-mail stopped working – coincidentally BT workers had been up poles in the street earlier in the day – the cooker went out and refused to relight, the torrential rain of a cold Midsummer's Day saw a drain back up and flood, and Liz said: "If you really want to cry, go and look at the blackleg in the potatoes."

I know that many people will have had worse weekends. Even from those who hadn't, no sympathy please. I just had to tell someone.