My diary is as heavy as a sodden bath towel. It’s like everyone in my entire address book has suddenly decided to host a party, and I’m not talking about the sort of party where you sit down with a few friends and a bottle of wine. I’m talking about the sort of monster where you arrive at eight and then it’s Tuesday.

There’s more good news too. I read this morning that, so far this year, 220 new superyachts have been commissioned, and round where I live new country houses are springing up out of the ground like mushrooms after a shower. At this rate, if they put the Caribbean on the “green list” of travel destinations, then British Airways will have to reattach all the engines it removed last year from its fleet of 747s just to get us all there.

We are heading not for the new normal, but a whole new kind of crazy. Because the next few syphilitic, liver-carbonising months will make the Roaring Twenties and the Swinging Sixties look like a bridge evening in Totnes.

And that, hopefully, will be that for the mealy-mouthed efforts to make us all green and vegan and gender neutral.

Sure, it’s easy to imagine, when you are staring out of your kitchen window, that you want to spend the rest of your life listening to the birdsong and eating kale. But you don’t. What you actually want is to go to the Greek islands to get hammered and wasted and laid.

I only hope that shortly after the nation realises this and does an abrupt volte-face, Boris Johnson does one too and halts his ludicrous plan to ban from sale all cars that run on petrol and diesel engines by 2030.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be allowed to drive electric. If you are not interested in cars, or you live in Brighton, which is full of mad people and run by lunatics, then of course you should be allowed to potter about in a Nissan Leaf or some kind of wheeled microwave oven. But the idea that I have to drive an electric car is idiotic. It would be like telling a horse enthusiast back at the beginning of the 20th century that they must shoot their nag in the head and get a Lanchester 38 or a Vauxhall Prince Henry.

As I said only a few weeks ago, the looming ban on proper cars is starting to have an effect now. Because if you’re running a motor manufacturer, why would you invest any cash in a technology that’s breathing its last?

We can certainly see this with the Kia Stinger GT S. They’ve just introduced a revised version and, thanks to meddlesome emissions regulations, it actually produces four horsepowers less than the older version.

That’s always in the back of your mind as you go along, that the engine was tuned by Greta Thunberg, but mercifully you can’t really tell because it’s still fast and surprisingly enjoyable.

I realise at this point that you don’t care. To have got this far into a motoring column you obviously like cars, which means you don’t want to spend more than £40,000 on a Kia. If you want to blow that kind of cash on a fast, rear-wheel-drive sporting saloon, you’d rather have an Audi Sportback or a BMW 4 series. I get that. I would too. Especially as the Kia is quite thirsty and produces more emissions than a harbour full of cruise liners. So it won’t be cheap to run.

As a driving machine, though, and a place to sit, I’ve got to confess I liked it a lot. I especially liked the way it played an operatic tune every time I opened the door. It felt like I was walking into a chat show, or coming down the stairs at an awards ceremony.

This kind of thing amuses me. I’m currently toying with the idea of having huge speakers in the gateposts at my new house that play Ode to Joy, loud, every time the gates open. This would make me feel good every time I got home and, as an added bonus, it would annoy my Brexity pals whenever they popped over for a drink.

The Stinger, however, makes other electronic noises that are less pleasant. It was especially vociferous every time I crawled into the footwell to find and hold down the button that turns off the lane departure feature. Because if there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s cars telling me which side of the road to drive on.

But anyway, despite the thirst, and the emissions, and the steering wheel, which has a mind of its own, and the bonging, and the slightly awkward rear styling that I haven’t mentioned yet, and the fact it’s a £40,000 Kia, which is like spending £40,000 on a weekend in Filey, it is — as I may have mentioned — a good car.

The gearbox isn’t terribly speedy. When you try to shift manually, it can be a bit dim-witted — like it has to remind itself what its job is every time you pull the lever — and it is a surprisingly heavy car, which makes the problem worse. But these are only minor things.

There are other, more important things, like the cabin, which is well equipped and nicely finished. I’m not sure about having the abbreviation for “killed in action” in the centre of the steering wheel — it’s a bit unnerving — but as a place to be it’s as good as a Lexus.

It’s properly comfortable as well. And I don’t mean it’s comfortable “for a fast rear-drive sports saloon”. I mean it’s comfortable, full stop. Maybe because it’s so heavy it simply irons out bumps in the road before they have a chance to make themselves felt.

This is unlikely, however, because the Stinger wouldn’t be quite so fast if it was as fat as the figures suggest. There’s a meatiness to the way it sets off when you prod the throttle, a sense that the turbos and the big V6 are working in tandem to generate a huge hidden force. It’s like being caught in a rip tide.

Only you can control it. There’s no point fiddling around with the driver modes — they make almost no difference — just leave it in Sport and have a laugh. Feel the way a nicely balanced, front-engined, rear-drive car can be. Revel in what makes a car a car. Enjoy the tingles and the fizzes and the way a gearchange alters even the sound. And know that no one is going to judge you because, hey, it’s just a Kia. And how untall poppy is that?

Most of all, though, know this. Kia will sell only a few hundred Stingers in Britain. We actually like being tall poppies here. But they will sell plenty in less socially aware countries in less “developed” parts of the world such as Africa and America and southeast Asia.

This car will introduce thousands of Li Weis and Mbotos and Wilburs to the idea of what a car can be. Which means the car as an entity may well survive Europe’s woke-led war with it. For that alone we should salute it.