DRIVING AMBITIONS

Living in London without a car could never be described as a genuine inconvenience.
If a bus was missed there would soon be another; or one could take an underground train to just about anywhere in the Greater London area, with no worries of wheel clamping, finding an adequate parking space or theft.

But then I moved to a small, isolated Yorkshire village where buses run infrequently if at all(I have a theory that they often disappear completely, during their journey between York and Doncaster, some Bermuda triangle-like phenomenon whisking them away to another dimension). Miss one bus and the whole day has to be totally re-organised.A real problem.Solution - learn to drive.Easy!I am a reasonably intelligent person; I will soon pass my test without too much bother or expense, I convinced myself.I managed to achieve eighty eight percent in my cycling proficiency didn't I?

My prospective instructor telephoned me after an initial inquiry at the driving school. He unnerved me immediately,his voice uncannily resembling that of a long deceased relative.Of course, common sense told me it couldn't possibly be dear, departed Uncle Henry but it was a disconcerting conversation nonetheless.

My instructor's name was Cliff; and believe me, it wasn't long before I began to wish he'd throw himself off one,even though he lived over forty miles from the coast.I soon decided I didn't like him one bit, so I wouldn't be counting myself amongst the many women who fall hopelessly in love with their driving instructor for no apparent reason.

Cliff seemed to think that a lesson of one hour's duration consisted of only forty minutes; he was invariably late in collecting me and often deposited me back on my doorstep before the full hour was up.Occasionally he would stop half way through the lesson,purchase his lunch, and proceed to eat it as I drove along. It was difficult for me to resist the urge to brake suddenly, as I would have derived an almost sadistic pleasure from seeing his face plastered in jam and cream sponge.

He possessed several rather irritating habits; chain-smoking, coughing uncontrollably, then intermittently puffing away on his asthma inhaler before lighting his next cigarette.He also managed to scratch practically everywhere accessible on his entire body throughout the duration of the lesson.How he was able to do so many things at once, and still find time to fiddle around with the dual-controls as well, I'll never know.

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