Guilty confessions of a learner driver

MY TEENAGE granddaughter is learning to drive, which brings back memories of my lessons in the Sixties. My instructor let me bring along my children, and as I also looked after two other children, there were five noisy and excited children in the back. I don’t remember there being any seatbelts at that time.

We would stop off at a corner shop, where my instructor would buy them some sweets to shut them up for a while. Then, when the sweets had been devoured, the noise would start up again.

We would park outside the instructor’s house as he said he had to go and get his ulcer pills. But I knew he was having a sly cup of coffee as well, as he would be inside for ten minutes or more. I understood he couldn’t cope with a whole hour of noise.

After a year, and 72 lessons plus three tests, my husband was nearly bankrupt and I’m sure the children could drive better than me by the end.

One hot summer, on carnival day, I drove through town and there, directing the traffic, was my instructor in a policeman’s uniform.

He’d never told me he was a special constable.

I nearly ran him over with the shock — not so much because of his job, but what I had divulged to him on our lessons! He’d become a sort of listening ear for all my woes.

But he just grinned and I smiled wryly back. The shame!

Mary Gilbert, Clacton, Essex.