Features
Clarkson rides the waves
I can only assume the people who drew up this law have no friends, and no urgent business to attend to. I can also assume that they all drive Citroen Picassos. The car of choice for the post-Rover generation.
And now, they're talking about making it illegal to smoke while driving. Not just in a company car, which is banned under the draconian smoking laws which came into force on July 1, but in any car.
No, really. The Local Authority Road Safety Officers' Association says on today's roads, it's important people concentrate only on driving. Not on anything else.
Oh dear, they really haven't thought this through.
A smoker who's denied the opportunity to light up is likely to become aggressive and impatient, a dangerous combination when you're on the A44 at 10am and you've a meeting in London at 11, and a bloody Picasso has just lumbered out of a side turning.
Smoking calms a man down. It gives him something to do. Not smoking causes accidents. In fact, if I were running the show, I would make it illegal to drive a car while not doing something else.
'A smoker who's denied the opportunity to light up is likely to become aggressive and impatient'
Eating a cheese sandwich, chatting on the phone, masturbating. Anything which turns what could be a boring and repetitive chore into a fairly pleasant experience that you don't necessarily want to end.
This, inevitably, brings me on to the car's primary source of entertainment: the radio. And specifically, what happens to it as the big hand reaches 12 and the little one gets to seven.
Radio 2, my preferred listening pleasure when in the car, stops playing music I - or any one outside Somerset - likes, and bombards the air waves with the sounds of cider being poured into a banjo. It's called folk, and not having ginger pubes full of twigs, I immediately switch over to Radio 4, which, at 7pm, plays The Archers.
The Archers is the most annoying entertainment ever conceived by man. It attempts, I know, to address issues of the day that face the countryside. But since nothing interesting ever affects the countryside, The Archers is woefully short of raw material.
Bookmark with:
What are these?