On boys in cars

I've always had a weakness for shiny metal capable of thrusting me forward at silly speeds. Its one of the things that my husband and I share. I grew up in Johannesburg, a city where your car is your second skin, your armour, your designer gear, and I drove a procession of flash little numbers; the nimble Renault Sport 2l Clio, the sexy MX5 convertible and even, though expressly forbidden not to, the modified BMW M3... But now we live in a world where it is possible to cycle everywhere (provided you stay away from lorries and those fatal blind spots). Gradually the car has turned from a refuge and a friend into a confinement and a slightly awkward acquaintance. I still love to scorch along country lanes, and there's nothing like the bubble of a car for shouting raucously along to the radio. But I see them differently now. My world can turn without them. I marvel at their engineering, but at times even that is overbearing, and we're building machines that cosset us, and try to soften reality. And I laughed yesterday when, from the saddle of my bicycle, I whizzed past a gold-plated Ferrari, burbling angrily in traffic on Brompton Road. It had Saudi number plates. The amount of glint it generated was damaging to the retinas of the ogling bystanders. Pity it was going nowhere slowly. Although today, on my way to a very thorough ballet class which the heavenly Amber introduced me to in Fulham, I passed two impossibly handsome Mediterraneans on the back of a flatbed. I was on the verge of smirking at the thought that their shiny Jag had broken down, when I realised they were being filmed, and, mid-take, they were smirking at me.