Speed is relative

I was 17 when my mother died. I need to tell you that to explain how I came to own an MG Metro at such a tender age. And now that I have, I need also to tell you that while she was appallingly young, she didn’t suffer.

In fact when the lights went out she was making Sunday lunch for her sons, which was just about her favourite thing in the whole wide world. So there you go. Needless to say, the Metro was hers.

By then I’d been on the road for about nine months and obviously didn’t own a car because I couldn’t have begun to afford one. But I had the occasional use of an elderly Citroën 2CV in which I learned the noble art of slipstreaming National Express coaches as they thundered up the M1. If you got close enough, it felt like you could almost take your foot off the throttle at 70mph, already far faster than the car would go under its own steam. That this was also close enough to not see any hazards that might make the coach suddenly brake, let alone be able to react and slow before concertina-ing into the back of the big white bus appeared neither here nor there. It really is quite surprising I survived it.