The shaking heads, the sharp intakes of breath when it’s mentioned, the knowing glances, I mean if I had a pound for every person whose told that they still can’t pull off the move, well I would have a driver of my mine by now.

It hardly fills this novice driver with much confidence to know that more experienced drivers still can’t do something that I need to know for the test. We pulled up in a quiet street with a car conveniently parked in the middle of it to have a first run at parking parallelly (if that actually is a word).

Lloyd got out his diagrams and broke down the move into sections to attempt to simplify things slightly.

Essentially, I was going to line up my back wheel with the parked cars front wheel and reverse before lining up my front wheel with the other cars back wheel, then reversing into the space while turning my steering wheel as left as I could and then steering right again to straighten the car up.

Easy of course, and I even had Lloyd to do a run through first. Predictably he nailed the move and it was all set up for me to triumphantly pull the manoeuvre off and have instant bragging rights over all those more experienced drivers. I set off confidently and, well, overshot the parked car.

Not to worry, all I had to do was reverse back just a tad and was held up by two cars trying to pass on the fairly narrow street.

After this I shot back in reverse like a scalded cat being chased by a greyhound before sheepishly inching the car forward again while being observed by a group of mildly bored teenage girls.

From day one Lloyd has attempted to drum into me the importance of ‘fast hands, slow feet’. Have you ever tried to rub your head while patting your tummy and vice versa? That’s pretty much what trying to reverse while turning is.

The trick is to very slightly move the clutch with the left foot while steering as quickly as possible. Having the hand-eye co-ordination of a particularly slothful drunken bear that has been rudely awakened from annual hibernation I find it slightly challenging.

I am capable (as Lloyd I’m sure will attest) of shooting off in reverse while steering like a mad man in a bad mood or inching back painfully slowly while steering like a frame by frame replay.

However the problem is my inability to combine the two that makes the manoeuvre so difficult.

This rather predictably led too much sweating and agonised cursing before I managed to miss the kerb by a whisper.

I tried it again and striving to find consistency managed to pull off a rather good impression of my first attempt. This was quite possibly enough for Lloyd who told me that it wasn’t a bad effort for a first timer before swiftly moving on.

This week I resolved to be a little more aggressive.