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Beyond the pale
The new Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera has got Jeremy worried. Has he bought the wrong car all over again?
I spent some of my summer holiday on a small Caribbean island. Created by a volcanic burp at some point in our ever-changing world's past, it was what most people would consider to be paradise.
Surrounded entirely by the sort of sea you normally find in airbrushed travel brochures, it was ringed by an uninterrupted sliver of perfectly white, perfectly deserted beach and, further out, a tropical reef blah blah Jacques Cousteau blah blah etc.
There were no hotels and the only other house I could see from ours belonged to Bruce Willis.
Hopefully, you have a mental picture of the scene because now we move onto the meat and potatoes. You see, the island in question was only a few miles long and a few miles wide. So how do you get about?
It's too far to walk from the one shop to the little dock where people keep their boats. But it would be ridiculous to drive. And so, while there is one pick-up truck - used to pull boats out of the water when a hurricane is coming - the residents move around in a collection of communal golf buggies.
'Lambo has found a bit more power and garnished the interior with all sorts of racing paraphernalia'
It's all very communist. You help yourself to a cart and then, if you're the last to use it at night, you have to plug it into the mains and charge it up.
Brilliant. No noise, no fumes, no pollution, no jams, no sense that Bruce's golf cart is bigger than mine and I must respond. And of course, absolutely no chance of anyone being even slightly killed...
You'd think. But that ain't necessarily so because, you see, sticking its oar into this Liberal Democrat's idea of heaven comes something called youthful exuberance. Mix that with a T-junction and someone's going to need the flying doctor.
If the golf buggy had had an engine, the person going the other way would have heard it coming. But it didn't. So he came round the bush, and bang. Of course, you may argue that a golf buggy can only do 15mph and that no harm can come to a driver at this speed. True enough.
But when it has a head-on with another buggy, also travelling at 15mph you have a 30mph impact. Doesn't sound like much? Really? Well try running face first into a wall and then send me an email explaining how things turned out.
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