Any day that begins with someone handing you the keys to a GT3 RS can rightly be considered a good day. And so it was, when the man from Porsche did just that.

Then the day went wrong. A blizzard hit the Cannes area, like it does every 2000 years. I had the definitive fast-road machine, access to the definitive fast roads, and I spent five hours sitting in a ****ing traffic jam. It was so unbelievably frustrating (as anyone who follows me on Twiter will already know) that it was almost funny.

Two events saved me from losing my marbles. The first was our escape from blizzard-strewn Cannes. Snapper Chris Rutter turned Sapper and scouted the A8, which had a barrier down closing it to all traffic. But we’d seen an elderly local-type drive straight around it, and feeling de-mob-happy through frustration, we slithered the Porsche’s hips around the barrier and skidded onto the A8. It was deserted. Apart from the odd stranded truck, we had the place to ourselves. I’ve driven that stretch of road hundreds of times: it’s always packed and almost always sunny –hence it being called the Autoroute de Soleil- and it just felt so foreign.

So we stopped and took a few snaps of the Porsche in those strange surroundings. And left before we were arrested.

In five hours we didn’t get above 60mph. That’s criminal in an RS.

Still, musn’t grumble, you see I’m going to have plenty of seat time in an RS over the coming months: I’m driving one at the Nurburgring 24hrs this year and (I’m pinching myself and grinning like a school child typing this), my team mate is called Walter Rohrl. For that opportunity, I’d happily spend hours – months even - dawdling about a snowy Cote D’Azur.