Week 17: Top Gear

 Type of writing: Jeremy Clarkson vehicle review.

This week it has fallen on me, Jeremy Clarkson, to carry out a coup and seize the online blog away from its author. “Why would I Jeremy Clarkson, an esteemed presenter and broadsheet reviewer, diminish myself to write a blog – graffiti with punctuation, I hear you ask?” Well, I’ll tell you. I have it on good authority that the creator of this www.isntmysoncutetosh.com knows nothing about vehicles. When it comes to model, specification and performance, he knows nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. He doesn’t appreciate these beautiful babies are the result of a tryst between man and machine, engineer and robot, hand and computer, flesh and circuitry. Like a retro Milky Way advert, all he can do is identify them by colour. Red car. Blue car. A teacher by trade, a numbskull by profession.

So when I heard he was going to write a review about his child’s buggy, I leapt into action. No reader, even readers of blogs, should have to endure sentences that even remedial children would deem too stupid. It’s better that I, Jeremy Clarkson, give you the lowdown, the rundown on the UPPAbaby Vista 2, in order for you to have a complete overview of its chassis and handling, rather than hearing from a man that when asked what buggy he has says, ‘It’s grey and green.’ 

In order to do the review justice, I made my way over to the author’s house early this week. Unsurprisingly, inside it had the paraphernalia you would associate with a Labour voting teacher. Peppermint tea. Fiction books. Fruit bowl. Gluten-free spaghetti. (Gluten-free must be one of few things where you take the main ingredient out and it costs more.) But for all the claptrap and hokum in this house, I couldn’t take it out on the baby. With any luck, he’ll end up at a top university with private school students, who will teach him the value of the free market and casual racism.

I first looked at Kit in in his carrycot. Despite being able to pop the hood, it’s a yawnsome contraption. Lying down, there is little opportunity to watch the open road, to hear the vroom of the engines, to imbibe the fresh dirty air. I got so bored of seeing him in there I fell asleep at the handle; it wasn’t until a car blared their horn in the middle of the road that I came to and remembered I was in possession of a buggy.

The toddler seat though is something else. Later this week, I came back when Kit had grown to a size that meant he was finally becoming interesting. Being taller and longer allows the driver to maximise the chassis. Now in an upright position, locked in by a five-point harness, handlebar in front, the boy looks every inch the F1 driver. And with that look, that elevation, I just had to take the UPPA out for a spin.

Hurtling around corners, the handling did not yield to my might. Yes, there were occasions we were up on two wheels like The Italian Job, but never once did we capsize this beautiful vessel. And I could tell Kit was happier too. Earlier in the week, he was asleep in the carrycot, looking like a pensioner pleading euthanasia, but now he was light and zesty, punching his hands on his toy mobile like Hamilton taking the chequered flag.

Admittedly, he was sick on returning home; although in my defence I would say heavy vomiting is a sign of a good drive. I wasn't going to clean him up anyway. Real men don’t change babies. I'll leave that to men like his dad.