WHEEL LIFE

AS of December 4 the UK driving test will have four big differences. The independent driving part will double to 20 minutes with zero instructions. Four out of five wannabes will be asked to follow a sat nav, while there will be three possible reversing manoeuvres and two vehicle safety questions.

What a palaver! In days of yore it was just as vital to succeed in this rite of passage but far less complex. My own driving instructor was a man whose tremulous voice and flaking skin spoke of a nervous disposition shredded daily by his acolytes.

To ease nerves – his own – he encouraged gear crunchers to play their favourite soothing music. I fear the TDK tapes of my first band did nothing for his constitution.

At the height of every pained guitar solo he would turn an ashen grey the exact hue of our Mitsubishi Colt.

I did get the hang of this driving malarkey and all was well, until that fateful 5am, travelling to work in a car borrowed from my dad: his fresh-out-the-wrapper BMW.

As I sliced through a scimitar bend in the gloom, a burst of smoke ahead of me whipped away to reveal the rear end of a truck, followed immediately by an exploding windscreen and the ear-rending stramash of smashed metal.

My brain has never revealed how I managed onto the embankment but I do recall turning in time to see a juggernaut come upon the back-tofront 5 Series and in slow-motion jackknife, sliding off into the darkness in a halo of orange sparks.

The long story made short – a bit like my dad’s concertinaed car – is an unharmed lorry that had stalled in smoking second gear in front of me, a written-off BMW, my collar bone broken in three, and an artic driver unharmed but with the right half of his leather jacket rubbed into the M9.

I begged the older, wiser brother Simon to call my dad.

“Tell him don’t worry, it’s only a machine . . . you can’t replace a son.”

Actually, it turns out when it comes to trashing BMWs you can, one for another – fast forward a year later and I’m visiting the folks at their retreat in the west of Ireland.

The younger brother Paul comes in fresh from borrowing BMW Mark II, followed moments later by Garda Keys.

“Now where, oh where, are you thinking you left your da’s car, Paul?”

Meekly we troop out into the night and follow the length of a uniformed arm as he points down the long, sloping driveway, across the road and through the garden wall of a near neighbour. There sits the black beauty, her grille steaming in furious ignominy amidst the rubble, her sullied rear almost touching the door of the cottage.

“Handbrakes,” says Garda Keys, “a wonderful thing when you remember them.”

When I arrive in Burke’s bar, dad is deep in novel cahoots with Dermot Healy, their confab mimed in florid gestures by Neil Jordan, resplendent in his movie director’s cape and black nail polish.

“You best come see Mrs McMaghan’s wall, dad!” says I in a nervous stage whisper.

“And why would I do that?” asks father, not unreasonably, as he is supping a pint. “Because your BMW is sitting inside it.” Oh, how, many, many years later, we laughed. But that’s the thing about my dad. He will always see the funny side, whatever calamity this life brings to his door . . . even if it’s straight through a garden wall.