I might have no testosterone but I do have a Fiat Barchetta

I’ve might have no testosterone. (My production is currently being stopped by injection once every three months.) But what I do have is a Fiat Barchetta, bought for a grand on a whim on eBay. It’s the prettiest little two-seater, an old-school, fun drive, with a lot of growl and it makes people smile. Left-hand drive. I’ve had it a month and so far I have yet to see another on the road.

The one obvious change thus far in my testosterone-free personality is my taste in music. I’ve gone from liking aggressive stuff like ZZ Top and AC/DC to preferring soppy Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell. The theme from Out of Africa. Gentler stuff. Triteness. I love you-oo. Also tabernacle choirs. Even folk. So I was belting along in my Barchetta under a windswept sky, Fairport Convention barely audible over the rumble of the exhaust, the road ahead long and straight, the moorland on either side wantonly disfigured by wind turbines.

My position on wind turbines (for what it is worth) is that I enjoy looking at the big ones. Those that are so enormous they beggar belief have a kind of majesty, I think. Or maybe that’s the lack of testosterone speaking. But these ones were elderly, small and crowded, and one was conscious only of a cretinous contempt for the landscape.

At intervals the road passed through straggling villages, narrowing as it did so. Parked cars on either side of the road in these villages constricted the way still further. I was sailing through one such village, disturbing the peace, when I clipped the wing mirror of a parked car, knocking out my own mirror. There was nowhere to stop in the village, not even a bus stop, and seconds later I was out the other side, on fast, open road again.