It doesn’t matter if it’s a foggy or a torrid day, spring or autumn, hot or cold, nothing can stop me from performing my ritual gestures.

I know that they have been repeated by many other drivers before me but in this moment I feel unique, like a pioneer who is about to face an unknown destiny..

After having laboriously put on the Bomber in vintage leather and fur and wrapped my neck with a soft scarf that I imagine is the last pledge of my beloved, I solemnly cover my head with the soft leather helmet and pull down over my eyes as a thin defense a pair of aviator glasses.

Finally with the image of Steve McQueen in my mind I put on the driving gloves now stained and worn but perfectly adherent to my hands, companions of so many kilometers traveled together.

A few extra pounds didn’t make it too easy to get into the cockpit, but I’ll certainly be going on a diet soon…

Settled in the driver’s seat, like a bean in a pod as Oliver Hardy would say, I have in front of me a splendid walnut dashboard, studded with instruments, warning lights and switches whose functions I never remember exactly.

I meticulously adjust the rear-view mirror which in any case doesn’t allow me to see beyond my shoulders and to find the most comfortable final position while I move left and right on the seat I firmly grip the wooden steering wheel, full of aluminium rivets that look like precious stones set in a crown.

At this point the most awaited moment, I turn the key… contact… the nervous ticking of the pump that makes the petrol flow to the carburetors, I imagine it as an IV of vital fluid that is about to give life to a mysterious being… Then finally it stops, the tanks are full, a pump of the accelerator to get the petrol flowing… I pull the choke…. Then a moment of uncertainty…. will it start? will it not start?

Stop hesitating! Of course it will start!

I firmly press the starter and here is the long-awaited roar that suddenly pervades the courtyard.

And now off we go. First, second, third, fourth, who can stop me anymore…

I have reclined the windshield, the aeroscreens protect my face but the wind envelops me in a total embrace, in front of me a splendid bonnet, long, profiled, full of air intakes and rivets that seems to me the fuselage of a Spitfire fighter and I feel so much like a retired RAF pilot.

Of course I miss the propeller and also the machine gun but who knows, maybe in some English market I can find some equally exciting accessory…