Four-by-Four
p. I caught a bit of “Top Gear”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/ yesterday—yes, I know, but it was an accident, I promise. I watched—tutting and rolling my eyes skywards—as Jeremy Clarkson burnt several inches of rubber off the tyres of a Bentley by pulling ‘doughnuts’, and marvelled again at the weird things that cars do to otherwise semi-normal people. Perhaps Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t entirely count as semi-normal, but I’m sure that you get my general point.
p. As evidence, I present this example of daft behaviour, seemingly prompted by the mere act of getting into a vehicle driven by both axles. While “I was staying”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000419.html in the Parc de la Rivière Bleu, Yves was driving me back to the cabin one day when a mud-splattered and rather desperate looking young man flagged us down. He said that his hire car had got stuck, and asked if we could give him a tow. So Yves picked him up and he lead us to the stricken car, where his friends—who were obviously beginning to despair of ever getting rescued in such a huge park—were staring balefully at the bogged-down Land Rover.
