Guilt: A feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offence, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.
See the above? I'm riddled with it. I'm so ashamed, I can barely look out of the window to where my ancient Beemer is parked, can hardly meet her unblinking stare, can scarcely imagine myself returning into the doting embrace of her cockpit.
For I have been unfaithful.
My betrayal took place whilst gallivanting under the Biarritz sunshine with a frisky Gallic wench of a car whose provocative curves and bumps enveloped a lush interior more comfortable than a cotton wool couch. She was a world apart from the antiquated Duchess with her razor-straight Germanic lines, sparse minimalism and juddering suspension.
The vixen to whom I gave my heart so freely? A rented Peugeot 307.
I know. Hardly the hot-out-of-the-design-studio futuristic concept car you were expecting. A plain old everyday Peugeot 307. Common as muck, you might say.
So how could I, proud owner of a 30-year-old Beemer with more style than a hangar full of chic Parisian fashion victims fall for such low-class totty? (Being a rental car, she'd go with anyone. I'm resigned to it. She's probably caressing an obese German nudist's buttocks as I write.)
They don't trust me around here to review cars - and rightly so, some might say - so I haven't the depth of experience to compare the 307 with her many competitors. For all I know, she's utterly pants in the hot hatch scheme of things.
Still, I know what I like. And what I like is gadgets. It doesn't take much to get me jumpy as an ADD kid in a toystore. Even electric windows are a novelty for a man who owns a car like mine.
I was enraptured when the 307's headlights came on automatically as I drove through a tunnel and almost had to stop for a calming rest when the windscreen wipers activated before I even noticed it was raining.
Old hat to most of you, but magical to one disposed to driving antiquated cars as technologically advanced as a paper bag.
My wonderment notwithstanding, it wasn't actually the gadgets that endeared her to me.
Nor was it the fact she was, as the rental firm lady told me - a bit apprehensively, I might add - a sports model. Why the 307 was labelled thus, I know not. Granted, she was a doddle to heave at unnecessary vitesse around corners and over speed ramps when I was alone with her on empty roads.
But then, aren't all rental cars?
Fact is, the 'sportiness' and gadgets are incidental to the story. What really made me love the 307 was the affect she had on my baby daughter. I've never driven a quieter car.
Reduced Emissions is currently a martyr to the teething. Poor child's cheeks are redder than those of a deep-sea fisherman with an over-fondness for the rum.
Don't get me wrong - I adore that divine little creature with every scintilla of my being, but even my patience, legendary in its thickness, wears thin after four consecutive hours of her howling like a haemorrhoidal hyena that's just sat on a porcupine.
Cunning as cunning can be, rather than ride out the storm for the whole holiday, I soon learned to plonk Madam kicking and screaming each night into the silent, womblike interior of the 307 where, within seconds of gentle motoring, she'd conk out like I'd jacked her up with enough morphine to fell a small hippo.
In a few months' time, the teeth will be out like Spring crocuses and all memories of the soporific qualities of the cocoonlike Peugeot 307 will disappear. Until then, I shall secretly remember our brief yet beautiful fling with fondness, gratitude and no small measure of longing.
Please don't tell the Duchess, as my fickleness would break her heart. She doesn't suspect a thing. I'd like to keep it that way. My life could well depend on it. Hell hath no fury and all that.
