Driving me mad.
April 19th, 2007 at 02:24
I recently reached an unimportant milestone – I’ve now been driving under my own steam for just over a year, by which I mean, I’m euphemistically describing having held a valid driving license for a year, not that it was only a year ago that I thought about installing a combustion engine into this metal frame with wheels that I used to push around.
I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with driving really- by which I mean, I love driving, but driving seems to hate me. I started learning to drive in the week following my 17th birthday in June 2004. I wasn’t very good at it, but I kept trying.
My progress was stalled slightly when as a Christmas present the same year, my parents added me as a named driver to my mum’s car insurance. So I took the car out on to the deserted Christmas day roads, and somehow, within two hours of being behind the wheel, managed to end up smashing up the front of the Nissan Micra by hitting a bollard when swerving to avoid a wobbly drunken cyclist. On Christmas Day.
Unfortunately, this is absolutely true. The car was sent to the Body Shop for them to have a look at, but it unfortunately turned out that some aromatherapy oils or whatever it is the Body Shop sell were no use – it was written off and it sort of spoiled Christmas a little bit. On the plus side, the bollard was fine though – it was hollow and it popped back up again and was fine.
So I continued having lessons for over a year – passing on my second attempt at the driving test in March 2005, after once again being insured on my mum’s insurance on her new car. It’s a dark-green Ford KA, which I’ve been driving to this day, and a car which I still believe is the manliest car on the road, regardless of whatever its effeminate shape or popular opinion might say.
I’m actually thinking of trying to “pimp” the car, as seems to be the fashion amongst young people today – I might put some white lights on the front, red ones on the back, with some intermittent orange ones on the side to give it some extra class.
I am concerned though that being a motorist has changed me. I still love the environment and hate pollution right? And the oil companies are still evil? But then… why should I take the bus when a car takes me to directly where I need to be? What difference does one extra car make anyway?
I’m even becoming irate at things that traditionally irritate motorists: I get impatient when stuck behind caravans and other slow vehicles, for instance. Old people too… at what age do old people think “right, I’m old now, so despite the speed limit being 70 miles per hour, I’m going to drive at 40 and infuriate everyone in the cars behind me”?
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, Delaney from Liechtenstein.