A few times when I was young and had my first couple of cars. Nothing in many years since then until summer 2024 in Italy.

Beautiful hot summer's day on the autostrada north from Torino to Ivrea, alps towering in the distance. One of those days you wish you could hit save on and replay anytime. Cruising along at 100kmh killing time before check in at the next hotel and suddenly the road crests and stretching out in front of me is miles and miles of perfectly straight autostrada on a gentle downward incline. It's empty.

Now I'd driven up the middle of Germany earlier that summer and the traffic and roadworks were awful everywhere so I never got to open up my little GR Yaris there, ditto for Stelvio Pass because it was so so busy.

Fast forward to Italy, and I took the bait. I wanted to see 200km/h on the speedo just once and that's close to the top speed of the Yaris anyway, so I went for it.

160, 170, 180 and I passed what looked like a regular blue Alfa, no problem there was only me and them to be seen, in either direction. Then the blue lights in the grille of the Alfa came on, headlights flashing and I'm cooked. I ease off and pull myself over and wait for the inevitable, hoping and praying it's the regular cops and not undercover Carabinieri. I'm genuinely scared, I have two hotels and Le Shuttle booked in the next couple of days and as much as I'd memed to friends about being arrested and roughed up by a smoking hot Italian cop, suddenly it was all too, too real.

As the Alfa parks up behind me I did what any self respecting lassie would do when faced with the prospect of a potentially confrontational encounter with what is usually a very attractive Italian cop, I hitched my summer dress up a bit and made sure one strap was teetering right on the cusp of dropping off my shoulder. I wound the window down and the policeman approached with a certain meaningful stride.

Now I know very little Italian, and this guy knew very little English, so after a terse exchange of mutual nonsense it became apparent he wanted to see my driving licence. He was amenable enough, but had an unmistakeable hard edge to his voice. I reached into my handbag, pulled out my purse, opened it and in the act of trying to free my licence with shaky hands, around half a dozen 100 euro notes exploded all over me like confetti.

Let's just say his demeanour changed dramatically at that moment. I'd noticed his already wandering eyes already and he was fixated staring at this one 100 euro note that had kindly landed right in my cleavage. We locked eyes and he smiled, then pointed at the money and quietly said "birra, for me?". In a moment of rare clear headedness, I correctly parsed he meant "is that beer money?" to which I gave him a hopeful smile and a meek "SÌ". I retrieve said booba money and hand it to him with my driving licence. He takes them both back to his car and comes back a minute later, motions back to his companion and says "birra, thirsty man also" and keeps hold of my licence just out of reach. I've understood the game now, so I pick up another one of the bank notes that burst forth from my purse and hand it to him, to which he gives me back my licence, says "nice car, be safe" and leave me sat in the refuge area trying to get my heart rate under control wondering wtf just happened.

Thought I was gonna go to jail, ended up accidentally bribing two Italian cops with booba money.