Paul On The Road - Part 1

On a slightly lighter note, I had my first driving lesson on Saturday. For those of you who don't know my license was (in my opinion) wrongly removed from me 4 years ago. Technically I was over the limt, although how often do you hear the prosecuting officer in court PRAISING the defendants driving? I was drunk but my driving was none the less quality, seriously though, it's not big and it's not clever and I would never suggest anybody do it. Especially if you end up having to do your test again, you really don't want to have to go through this, trust me.

Anyhoo, my lesson...has anybody realised that we are in fact ALL driving incorrectly? We should be looking anywehere other than the direction in which we are travelling for most of the time and it is illegal go down a gear. You are supposed to coast to any form of junction in top gear with that clutch pedal firmly on the floor, WTF!

To be fair it all started of well, "You just drive around Mr B, we'll have a chat and i'll let you know what you should be doing?". OK with me, then, the first roundabout (this is a manx roundabout, otherwise known as a blob of white paint in the road), "left shoulder check", "left mirror", "mirror","what's coming from the right","left shoulder check, JUST A GLANCE", "mirror", at this point i'm ready for throwing up. For christs sake all I want to do is carry on straight ahead, I can see there is nothing coming from the right. I'm that busy looking in every other direction than that in which i'm heading that I almost rear end some poor sod in front of me. "How's about I just get us through here without hitting anything and then you tell me what I did wrong?", this was not put acrosss as a question at the time, I was feeling sick. "What would have happened if there would have been a bike on your left?" , obvisouly I would have seen it and he would have seen me, in fact if HE would have hit ME after I had signalled then i would assume he would have been in the wrong. Either way I would not have to check my mirrors 8 bastard times and risk hitting the car in front. If everybody just keeps an eye on what is in front of them then surely we would all be fine?

Once I got used to driving whilst looking in any direction other than forwards (I felt at times I was steering using the force) things settled down. After all I thought it's not my car and i'm not responsible so if I hit anybody your man next to me is firmly to blame. I trundled around just on the speed limit holding up queues of traffic and generally driving in a way that would have driven me mad in the past. I apologise both for Saturday and in advance for any further lessons I have to anybody else who happens to be on the road. I really really really don't want to have to drive like this but it is I am told the only way to pass the test. The end result of my 2 hour neck twisting endurance exercise was that I can drive fine and that I should be in for my test asap. I can't wait, once passed I can actually get back to driving, not bullshit learner driving, but proper real driving.

Once again, aoplogies to anybody stuck behind me on Saturday!!!