WHICH Colleen deserves more sympathy — Coleen Rooney or me?

The question came up in the office yesterday morning after a colleague said, "Poor Colleen" and my pathetically grateful "Thank you" was met with, "No, not you — Coleen Rooney!".

At the risk of sounding like a big, whiney, moaning baby (again), I was feeling a bit sorry for myself at the time, on account of the upside-down car on my lawn.

I suppose that an upside-down car on the lawn isn't as bad as Mrs Rooney's problems with her Wayne, but it was troubling me just a little at the time.

Possibly you may want to know how the upside-down car came to be on my grass.

But I have a problem here. My natural inclination is to turn this into a funny story.

It's just the way I am in a crisis. The more serious the situation, the more likely I am to look on the funny side or get the giggles.

But if I'm not careful, writing this week's column might upset my relationship with my lovely daughter — and that's not something I'm prepared to risk, so I'm going to attempt to be serious and sensitive for a change.

The car, you see, belongs to said lovely daughter. But before that it belonged to her Dad, who died last year. And she loves that car.

To her it's more than just a hulking great, T-reg diesel estate, obviously.

The fact that it's a hulking great diesel estate is, in fact, one of the reasons that she loves it so much. She calls it her tank.

It's full of her memories of her Da: fun times, joking about, listening to music. All those journeys backwards and forwards between Newton Abbot and Torquay were their quality time together, when they could just sit and chat and be silly.

So, as the only one of our three children who can drive, it seemed right that she should inherit the car last summer.

For the past three months it's been sitting on the drive while she's been away travelling around most of South America.

I went up to Heathrow at the weekend and fetched her home and there was much joy and celebrating.

The next day she jumped into her car, with her little brother in the back, to take him to swimming club and... this happens.

Don't ask how. We don't really know and maybe never will. Possibly there was something wrong with the brakes after three months out of action. Possibly she misjudged the distance. Whatever. Somehow she lost control and her boyfriend, who was watching from the terrace, said it just drifted slowly, silently and gracefully sideways and turned turtle.

When her little brother was helped out, giggling and totally unscathed, his first words were: "Well at least Mum will have something to write about in her column this week!"

Indeed.

They were both physically fine, but my daughter's really, really, really grief-stricken.

I was on my way to meet them after work when she phoned and bravely tried to give me the news in a jokey way, before bursting into tears. My only reaction at first was total relief that they were both OK. What if the brakes had failed while they were out on the road?

I got home and the sight that greeted me as I walked in through the garden gates was so incongruous that laughter seemed the only appropriate response — although that upset my daughter even more.

I said that we always knew the car wouldn't last forever, but she gave a little sob and said: "I didn't!"

So we sat and had a cup of tea and had absolutely no idea what to do next.

After that I decided that a bottle of good, strong red wine was the only other thing I could do.

Then we phoned her insurance company, but they weren't the least bit interested as she only has third party cover.

After that I got out the Yellow Pages and found a number for a very nice vehicle recovery man.

He did the tooth-sucking thing and scratched his head and took lots of photographs and measured the distance from the road and joked about how it might have to stay there forever as a garden ornament and went away again.

Because the gate is too narrow there were even mutterings about the garden wall having to come down.

Over the next 24 hours we had many, many suggestions about how to get the car out of there.

Teams of firefighters, rugby players and weightlifters were all suggested. The marina crane was another idea.

But when I got back from work the next day the first man had come back, with a crane and a low-loader with a winch. They were on their way back from another job and it only took 20 minutes and they didn't even need the winch.

The crane reached. Just. They very carefully rolled the car back up the bank.

And it doesn't look too bad. The battery was flat and the engine was full of fluid, so it didn't start.

But the damage doesn't look horrendous: a dented bonnet and roof and a broken windscreen.

So at the moment my daughter is still determined to get her Dad's car back on the road... we're waiting for quotes. Watch this space.

So... who wins? Is it Coleen 'one-L' Rooney or me?

I do know, really, that the upside-down car is not as big a deal as Mrs Rooney's problems with her Wayne. Looking on the bright side: at least I don't have paparazzi crawling all over my garden wall with cameras (not unless I include myself).

Plus, I have the fact that I'm not married to Wayne Rooney to be thankful for.

What a load of rubbish

I'm refusing to be drawn on the bins issue.

Recycling is good and right on and we all want to save the planet. Obviously. And in my road the introduction of the new system has gone like clockwork.

The old bins were emptied as usual last Friday and the new bins were collected today by those nice men who have to sort through our rubbish. I felt sorry for them.

I used to live in Teignbridge and really missed my recycling bin when I came to Torquay. So I'm pleased to be doing all I can for the environment again.

But I did try ringing the Tor2 helpline to ask if I can have a wheelie bin instead of a sack (which I despise because rats chew through them and seagulls drag them all over the roads).

As you can see from the car story above, I have a driveway with plenty of room for a wheelie bin and cannot see why I can't have one.

I did get through on the helpline and was told someone would ring me back. That was three weeks ago. Nobody rang and since then I haven't been able to get through. We were discussing all this in the office and a colleague who lives in Teignbridge was being all snide and smug about the Torbay bin chaos, and how much better their bins are.

But when we asked him details of how his system actually worked he admitted that he wasn't too sure of the details: "Mrs P deals with all that," he said.

So that's the secret to all this bin chaos. It has nothing to do with the council or Tor2.

What we need in Torbay are wives! Really good wives.