I can remember watching, every week, The Untouchables on my parents' TV - the glorious clatter of tommy guns would fill the lounge - Elliot Ness would rasp a wisecrack - Agent Rico Rossi was at the wheel of the Packard -
I especially welcomed the spectacle of drive by shootings - you'd see a doomed mobster in a barber's chair - there'd be towels wrapped round his neck - you'd hear the Lincoln's tyres screaming round the corner - then a fiery rain of lead would shatter glass and bump off the snitch -
When I had my first car, I fondly recalled the series - I'd sit in the blue Sunbeam Rapier, imagining I was wearing a fedora - I'd forget that I was a newly qualified teacher - in my imagination, I was a lantern jawed agent -
All of this glorious nonsense returned to me recently - I was walking towards Briantspuddle with Penny - we were on the outskirts of the village - we'd just made our way through a tract of coniferous woodland - I could still feel the subtle influences of the silent trees -
Suddenly we heard tyres, scrunching gravel - to my joy, a black sedan slowly passed us - its coachwork was immaculate - its engine growled softly - I felt dizzy with the glamour of this dark shape, emerging so serendipitously from my TV memories -
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