Learning to Drive :: Day One :: Peepin’ and a Creepin’

The breakfast was really good. Two fried eggs, bacon, a sausage, hash browns, baked beans, fried bread and a little tomato. Not at all greasy. Lovely coffee. Faultless toast. Orange juice. I know it really wasn’t, but it actually felt quite healthy, and once I’d polished it off, I felt ready for anything.

Then came the first day’s driving.

How they work it here is there are usually three of you in the car at any one time. There’s the instructor and two learners, who each take alternate hours behind the wheel. My fellow learner – let’s call him Joshua – is at the other end of the driving spectrum to me, inasmuch as he’s already been driving for 12 years, and despite losing his li- … actually I probably shouldn’t say.

Bugger. I kind of wish I was still anonymous. This would all be so much more interesting as a result. And terrifying. You’d never feel safe in an ambulance again.

Never mind, never mind. Let’s plough on anyway, like an out-of-control Toyota Avensis careering towards a busy burger van.

So Joshua drove first, and our instructor – nothing like Eddie Marsan in the above clip thankfully – guided him around the city, asking me questions as we drove. Joshua is just doing a day’s refresher before sitting his practical tomorrow. He’s a good driver, and there were only a handful of sins that would have failed him were he sitting his test today. But of course, it only takes one.

Then we drove to a large car park, and for the first time in very nearly 30 years, I was in control of a four-wheeled motor vehicle. (Semi-control.)

And it was fine. Apart from stalling once, changing into the wrong gear a few times and veering too far to the left quite a few times, I did OK. I drove. In fact, I drove that motherfucker all over town. And towards the end of the day, I was even beginning to relax a little. Christ, it’s a tense business, driving. All those fucking nutcases out there! You lot! You terrify me!

Visions of Blackpool carnage, earlier today. (Actually, a photo I took on a relaxing walk, earlier this evening. Some Pleasure Beach distraction or other.)

At 3pm, we came back to the centre and did a couple of hours theory with a different instructor. This was when I found out that there is another part of the theory test of which I had been hitherto unaware – the Hazard Perception test.

My theory test is tomorrow.

And it’ll be fine.

En-ra-ha.

 

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