This passing-your-driving-test business is great. Not only can I swan around sniggering mercilessly at L-drivers, but people are now beginning to give me free stuff.
Like Ford, who offered me a lash around the racing track in Mondello with a professional instructor in their boy racer special, the 2-litre, 148bhp Fiesta ST. Considering my past pronouncements on boy racers and their cars, I reckoned this was a brave move.
I warned them beforehand that I would have no qualms about saying the Fiesta was rubbish if I deemed it so. Which, thankfully for all concerned, it wasn't.
That said, my first view was a bit of a shock. The car was red with two parallel white stripes running from bumper to bumper across the top. They didn't really expect me to get into this thing, did they?
They evidently did. I swallowed my pride and hopped in. It was tiny inside, but surprisingly comfortable. It even had a seat warmer, which I set off unwittingly, giving myself an unexpected but not entirely unpleasant warm feeling around my loins. A good start, you'll agree.
We got to Mondello, where to my horror I realised Ford had sent along a photographer. As the above mugshot illustrates, I'm not the most photogenic of chaps. I shudder at the sight of a camera at the best of times, so I was doubly mortified at having to pose alongside the ST on the track.
I soon got my own back (see below!). The snapper asked to join the instructor, Ian, and me for a few laps for some action shots. I tore off, ripping into the first few corners, throwing out the back like a stunt driver. The snapper, who'd forgotten his seatbelt, was thrown around like a chicken in a hurricane. "Could you, maybe, slow down a little, please?" he asked after the first lap, ashen-faced. "Sure," I said, and tore off again. Naughty me. The Fiesta made me do it, Your Honour, honest.
"You've done this before, haven't you?" Ian asked when we'd jettisoned our passenger. I explained to him my wife had got me a lesson here as a birthday present. "Ah, you can tell." That's all I'll say on the matter. If I was to disclose to you that he thought my driving was "brilliant" (direct quote, FYI), you'd think I was bigheaded. And that wouldn't do, would it?
We did five or six laps. The ST was fantastic. Wickedly fast, inch-perfect handling, cornered like a dream. We got quicker and quicker with each passing lap.
And then it started raining. And when I say raining, I mean, of course, a monsoon erupted over Kildare. I watched, crestfallen, as great rivers of rainwater began sloshing down the middle of the track.
"Perhaps we'd better cool it," Ian said. I was gutted to think my one chance to tear around a racetrack in this cracking little car was going to be cut short. But, miracle of miracles, it soon began to clear.
We set off again. It was seriously slippery out there - I was rounding corners more like a speed skater than a motorist. But apart from one spectacular spin at a chicane that saw us come to a juddering halt on the grass, windscreen and bonnet splattered with clumps of mud, we managed fine. In fact, I'd venture as far as to say it was even more fun in the wet.
The session ended. I wanted more. And more. And more.
Driving home, the only people who paid us any attention were four baseball-hatted louts in a Subaru, laughing away at a Fiesta with go-faster stripes on it. If only they knew what we'd just been up to. I smiled, smugly, knowing this red bullet would leave them spluttering in its exhaust fumes on the racetrack.
You may have realised that I had a bit of a revelation brought on by the ST. Deep down inside me, buried far, far down in the blackest recesses of my psyche, there's a boy racer begging to be let out.
I'm very, very ashamed. Damn you Ford and your devilish little temptress of a car.
