Throttle control

Went for a walk along the Bacon, the coast road which heads from the plage de la Salis towards the plage de la Garoupe. Most of the way there is a pavement, even if it is frequently blocked by cars parked over the kerb. But the first three hundred meters are a frightening canyon between the walls of luxury villas, with the cars and motorbikes swishing past you within millimetres.

It was all worth it for the views, though, which are spectacular - embracing the snow-clad Alps, the hills above Nice, and the coastline from Monaco right down into the Ligurian riviera. And always in the foreground the minty blue Mediterranean and the honeyed walls of old Antibes.

On the way back, though, we had just reached the canyon when there was a roar like a Russian tank battalion ready to crush parliament. We ducked and squeezed against the wall, holding onto each other in stark terror. It was a group of fifty-year-old boy racers in Ferraris and Lamborghinis, hurtling through the gap and trying to overtake each other. The wind of their passage nearly tore our clothes off, and they were past almost as soon as we saw them. Cardiac rhythms took quite a while to return to normal.

These kind of mentalist show-offs never get apprehended by the fuzz, who secretly admire and envy them. But I have a solution which has the advantage of natural feedback. As these phallic-challenged twats get into their automobiles, a large vice-like set of serrated metal plates would lock round their tight panted goolies, linked directly to the throttle. As they accelerated, the vice would close tighter, affording them the gonadal thrill they had bought the Ferrari for in the first place. At great speed, the screams of discomfort or even emasculation would be drowned out by the deep manly roar of the turbocharged twelve cylinder engine...