Motoring: Extreme driving

One week, two convertibles. The first, a 40-year-old held together by rust, with doors so warped I’ve taken them off, the windscreen secured by baler twine to keep out the rain when it stands but removed when we go anywhere, no lights, free road tax, cheap insurance, and a first-time starter that does all you ask of it, eventually. Neither old enough to be interesting nor rare enough to be valuable, it is of course my tractor, a Universal, a Romanian Fiat built under licence. It belonged to my father and I paid the man who bought his farm £200 for it.

It is massively overengineered and quite wonderfully slow. On our annual tractor trundle — a three-hour procession of 60 to 80 old tractors around the parish — its low gearing ensures a long gap between me and the next ahead until we reach a hill, the steeper the better, when all that low-end torque shows its strength and up we swoop like a swallow.