Deliver us from speed awareness courses

I can’t decide if I’m a brilliant or bad driver. I admit I didn’t pass first time (it only took seven attempts). But in the intervening decades, I’ve amassed so many miles behind the wheel I like to think that, if he knew me, I’d be Sadiq Khan’s Public Enemy No.1.

High mileage, no major accidents and zero fatalities must mean I’m alright. I’ve got a clean licence too. I put it down to the rosary I chant along to on Spotify with all the superstitious spirituality of a Sicilian nun as I speed across town for my dawn swim. It has been divinely ordained that I should dovetail the numerous speed awareness and driver awareness courses I accumulate every three years.

My first experience at the mercy of the traffic police is still raw. It was a typical Tuesday in the middle of the holidays: me, running late, illegally cramming my own daughters and three cousins into our frankly condemnable car, and driving them at high speed to five different courses in different parts of town, beginning at the same time, while applying my make-up in the rear-view mirror and using my phone to field requests for George Ezra.