Dad’s poor road skills drove us all up the wall
MY daughter has returned to driving lessons after lockdown with trepidation but says she has drifted immediately back into the flow, which is, perhaps, not the sort of driving best suited to the ring road round Huddersfield at rush hour. Times were different in my day. I applied for my provisional licence at 17 and took half a dozen lessons at a driving school in Knutsford, the Cheshire town where I worked as a junior reporter. The senior man was an ex-army officer with a handlebar moustache and fancy waistcoats who had failed to escape type-casting in Ealing comedies. Still, I got the basics in those half dozen lessons and thereafter drove my father’s car.
A neighbour in his 80s was often my responsible adult although I suspect he was more suited to Model T Fords than a Ford Anglia. He encouraged me to drive as fast as possible as he sat in the passenger seat chuckling.
Lessons from my father were fraught with danger because he was the world’s worst driver by a million miles. Not that he ever completed a million miles: he drove the car into the back of an articulated lorry on his way to work in Manchester when I was 22.
A month in hospital cured him of speed, bad judgement and driving and I inherited the car. Once it had been repaired.
I passed my driving test at the first attempt whilst still 17 with what I like to think of as natural flair, although the Test official described me as one of the flashiest young drivers he had ever seen. I took it as a compliment. After that I never looked back. Well, I occasionally used the side mirrors. The Test cost £1.
Daughter Siobhan didn’t learn until in her 30s and is a superb driver, skills she has honed on Ireland’s narrow roads with their farm tractor chicanes and nonchalance for rules and regulations unless approaching a Garda checkpoint.
Sian left it until she was 40 before a daily commute to Bradford made her think driving might be a better idea than an X63 bus.
Then again she hasn’t driven down the M62 at rush hour. Which is absolutely no place for drifting.
...the test official described me as one of the flashiest young drivers he had ever
seen