What a Job

There are good Jobs and then are great jobs. Of course there are crap jobs as well but nobody thinks about those unless, unfortunately, you are locked into one and then you just think of the great jobs …… and dream.

The great jobs? A football writer or even better, a football commentator. A tourist guide in some exotic part of the world possibly, although you might just end up with some horrible tourists to try and keep happy, so maybe not.

I’m frequently reminded of one of the great jobs as I toodle around on my scooter down here on the Côte D’azur. What is it? A motoring correspondent.

As I was coming back from dropping Guy off at a birthday party the other day, I was held up at a particularly narrow part of the road passing through Tourrettes. Car after magnificent car passed me. Firstly, it was the colours. A wonderful metallic purple (yes I know but apparently I have a feminine side), then a gorgeous light silver metallic then a burgundy red metallic and then an orange, yup – metallic.

Then I looked at the car. As something of an anorak when it comes to fancy cars, particularly convertibles, it struck me that this one was new. I’d never seen it before. The marque on the front of the car was very distinctive – it was the ‘L’ for Lexus.

I’d love a Lexus. They’re apparently incredibly quiet and being a Toyota of sorts, they’re also totally reliable but they do cost a few bob. And this one looked stunning.

We often see new cars on the roads down here. The roads going up into the mountains are wonderfully scenic and any roads used for James Bond car race scenes (which they have been) are obviously the sort of roads which car manufacturers love to use to get the world’s motoring press down here to test their cars and then hopefully, write a positive article on their latest piece of work.

To be a motoring journalist and be told, say on the Monday, to get yourself down to Nice to test a brand new, and as yet, not publicly available, luxury car, is the stuff dreams are made of.

You fly down and book into a luxury hotel in one of the world’s most favourite places. All your foreign colleagues are there and you have a great dinner, looking forward to the following morning when you’re given the keys to a wonderful new car and a convertible one at that. On the day of the test you are given a route to follow and off you go. No ties, no strings – just bring the car back in one piece in the evening.

You drive off and head for the mountains. You’ve been down here many times before, testing Renault Clios, Ford Fiestas, Seat Leons but this is the one you’ve been particularly looking forward to, a brand new convertible Lexus IS250c .

You know a great restaurant up in the mountains and so do your colleagues so you all arrange to meet up, have a fantastic lunch and compare notes. What a day out. The only thing is – no booze of course. The 2000 ft sheer drop on the way back down to the airport is quite unforgiving if you stray too far to the side of the road.

The Lexus convertible is due on sale in the UK later this summer. The US, lucky devils, have it already.