I was watching Top Gear the other night, and you will remember the episode. It’s the one where Jeremy Clarkson goes out in a mediocre family car that looks like a slug and goes just as fast as one too. He takes it to Royal Tunbridge Wells where he thinks it will fit in perfectly with the kind of people who live there. Plenty of opportunity for his usual wise cracks here. He is then seen driving some behemoth of a sports car over a twisty part of this green and pleasant land whilst More Than a Feeling by Boston is playing as the sound track. The cameraman had found a new effect with a lens to make the sky look more broody, before cutting to the car going sideways with rear tyres smoking on a track somewhere, and we are never quite sure if Jeremy is really the one driving it at this point.  You do get a close up of his toothy grimace, however, and here think of Wallace eating a chunk of tangy Wensleydale. Yep, you know that look.

Later in the studio an argument ensues as to the coolness of the car, which is a model that none of us will be able to afford anyway, and so the whole subject matter really is irrelevant.

Before I drift too far from the point, what I was thinking, as I watched the show, was how Jeremy reminds me of America. I don’t mean he is loud, brash and opinionated as some seem to think the Americans are, well perhaps he is a bit, but the point I am trying to make is that when you look at him he has a wild bit at the top, which can be regarded as Alaska, a loud bit further down, this would be New York, and long legs that are not always seemingly within his control, so this would be Florida, together with Governor Jeb Bush then?  It must have been something I had been drinking to have come up with these thoughts I guess, or just the way my mind seems to wander off at tangents these days? Either way I am happy in my little world. Of course I then went off into my little world again and thought that if Jeremy was standing in profile, for my American analogy, that would put his rear end roughly in the right position to make it L.A, and certainly if the good Lord were to give that continent an enema, then nowhere deserves it better.

What I am eventually getting to is that after a few decades on this planet, you know exactly what to expect. Life doesn’t seem to throw up those surprises quite so often than it did when we were children. Christmas was a time for wide-eyed wonderment, but not these days.  Now you know that you will have to see relatives, and that despite everyone loathing Uncle Frank with that ridiculous wig, and Aunt Beryl with her vermillion lip-stick under her moustache, you know someone will have done the right thing and invited them along.

You know that when your wife says she just needs a couple of things from the shops that you will again believe her, and that the lingerie section will always be right by the fitting rooms, so despite the fact that you are loitering outside waiting for your good lady to appear, you actually feel you are being looked upon as a pervert on day release.  What happens here is that the more you try to act normal, and to look innocent, the more strange your presence there will seem.

Other things you get to know is that anything wearing a trilby and driving a car is a hazard, you know you will get nasal hair, that someone always gets drunk at weddings, and there’s always that girl who no one is quite sure exactly who she is, crying at parties.  You know that one day you will find grey is again fashionable, and that no matter how much time you allow to complete a task, there will always be something that makes you run over.  Yes, some things in this life are a definite, it’s like death and taxes, you just know they are going to happen. If you are nodding sagely in agreement as you read, then welcome to my world.