Driven to distraction

The theory part of the driving test has apparently just been made more difficult. The BBC website is carrying a quiz to see how many of the multiple choice questions we know the answer to. To pass, you need nine out of 10. To my shame, I scored seven. I would have scored six if I’d answered question 10 honestly.

In my defence, I sat my test a long time ago – before the theory test was even invented. Our theory involved swotting up on the Highway Code and learning the stopping distances on the back cover parrot-fashion ('and double it if it’s wet’). I had no concept of what the stopping distance physically looked liked then, nor do I now, and I certainly can’t remember what they are in theory. I wasn’t quizzed on stopping distances in the three quick-fire questions I was asked after I’d done the practical part of the test. I am one of those unbearable smug people who passed first time.

I am a firm believer that you only really learn how to drive when you’re out there doing it on your own. I didn’t drive at all in the six months between passing and buying my first little mini. Three days later (with a friend along for moral support), I did a round trip of 300+ miles: I had to find somewhere to live because I was starting a new job. That drive was a baptism of fire: I managed to graze the central reservation while fiddling with the lights. I also learned to parallel park in that little car, something I would’ve failed my test on had I been asked to do it. But in the real world, I had to learn if I wanted to park outside my house.

I think now, though, new drivers forget rather than learn new skills when they throw away their L-plates.

One question I would like to see included in the new theory test is:

When do you use your indicators?

a. I don’t, I expect the other motorists to telepathically know what my next manoeuvre will be.
b. Indicators? I don’t need indicators – I’m king of the road!
c. My car doesn’t have indicators.
d. When turning or pulling in or out.

I reckon a lot of today's drivers would get that one wrong …

The lore of the road

My driving instructor was a strange little chap: we couldn’t start my lesson until The Archers had finished (in case it affected my concentration); he could smoke and I couldn’t (ditto). “You drive like you live your life,” he told me once. I took it as a compliment.

But I remember him most for introducing me to the rudiments of the lore of the road. “Beware of Volvo drivers,” he cautioned, “they think they own the road.” The father of my boyfriend of the time drove a Volvo and perfectly satisfied the stereotype. Saab drivers were to be given a wide berth too: “Their cars are built like tanks so they’re not too bothered if they hit you.” I quickly learnt that BMW drivers (especially those in black cars) were part of the same clique.

Today, Audi drivers appear to have adopted the mantle. There seem to be more Audis on the road: they always used to be aspirational motors that were confined to the affluent. Either Audis have come down in price or people are buying cars out of their class. They certainly don’t show many manners. They think nothing of pulling out in front or cutting you up. For such expensive cars, I find it quite curious that most don’t have indicators fitted as standard.

In that respect, they are almost on a par with the kings of the indicator avoiders – the boy racers. It seems to be a badge of honour – along with fat exhausts that look like empty baked bean tins and a mind-numbing bass beat that they nod to like the Churchill dog – to turn off or pull out without signalling their intention to other people on the road.

I spend two hours commuting, five days a week. I have developed a very thick skin and can string together whole lists of expletives in a most artistic manner. Audi and BMW drivers, I have found, are especially good at tailgating you at 80mph. I don’t move. If they flash their lights, my foot involuntary removes itself from the accelerator. I am also quite handy at gesticulating and blasting the horn. “Once you’ve found the horn,” says one of my colleagues, “you never forget where it is.” She’s so right.

Of cars and cleaning

My car is a rather clapped out Corsa called Charlie. I have had him for nearly six years; that’s longer than some marriages last. But I am not kind to him. He is forced to do a 100-mile round trip five days a week; I tell people in his hearing that I want a diesel and I openly lust after a 4x4 with horsebox pulling capabilities. But I think, deep down, it is the lack of TLC that hurts him the most.

My brother, who is an avid Top Gear viewer, adores his car. It is regularly cleaned inside and out. It is on intimate terms with Turtle Wax and air freshener-impregnated cards that dangle from the mirror. Charlie, in contrast, never even gets a bath. His boot is full of dirty winter horse rugs, his back seat further covered in horse paraphernalia – numnahs, bits, parts of bridles, boots, plus plastic bags containing feed dregs and the odd mummified carrot.

My granddad grimaces whenever I give him a lift. He is wary of putting his feet on crisp packets and sweet papers, bits of string, more carrier bags and finds from the fields: broken cut glass decanter tops and a rusted metal crescent that I believe is an ancient bracelet but others with no imagination think was used to attach pipes to a wall.

It was worse when I smoked. The footwell debris was joined by dozens of empty fag packets. Once, when Charlie went for his MOT, someone wrote ‘clean me out’ on one of those ciggie boxes and propped it on the dashboard. Another time, the mechanic told my dad he wouldn’t touch Charlie again unless he arrived in a presentable state.

Perhaps it's a man thing.

Sprite

Bank holiday weekend, it would seem, means only one thing: convoys of caravans compelled north on some strange pilgrammage to God's Own Country.

They crawl up the grey ribbon that is the single carriageway of the A1 like cream coloured lice.

Last time, I was stuck behind a 'Crusader'; this time the miscreant was a 'Sprite'. Funny thing was, there was nothing spritely about it ...

Organised chaos

I have lost the grey mare’s passport; she’s not going on holiday but if I don’t have one, I’ll be in major trouble. It has been missing for around two years, and today I decided to officially declare it gone forever. Apparently it will cost me £22.50 for a duplicate.

I am not, I must confess, the most organised of people. I am in my professional life – I juggle tasks and meet deadlines with aplomb; I’m even quite good at organising other people. My animals don’t know my dark secret either: they are fed, watered and worshipped.

But in my personal motto seems to be “why do today what you can put off until tomorrow”. Hence the lack of action over the passport, and my current mild panic about the horse and car insurance policies. Both are due for renewal shortly, and due to an oversight, I forgot to tell the companies I moved just before Christmas. Ditto the DVLA. Last time I was stopped by the police, the policeman wasn’t very impressed with the fragments of pink paper that piece together to make up my licence, either.

I am a hoarder – I am always convinced that if I throw something out I will need it. I have a forest-worth of paperwork stuffed in various folders, boxes and drawers. But last year, I couldn’t find my MOT certificate and had to pay for another one. I can easily lay my hands on a letter of appointment from 1992 or an electricity bill from 1996. What’s the betting my insurance details won’t be quite so easy to find?

Doe, a deer ...

I love to sing. I sing to my cats, I sing to my horse, I sing in the car. However, I don’t sing in front of other people.

Like most teenagers, I harboured the odd fantasy of being a rock star. I was even in a very short-lived punk band when I was 14. We wrote our own songs and used an old acoustic guitar as the bass. I was the singer; however, when you’re trying to sound like Johnny Rotten, you don’t need to be tuneful.

I thought that all I needed was a producer. I went out with one for a while; he used to wince and tell me it hurt when I sang, so I stopped singing. One radio station I worked at had regular sessions with a voice coach to improve our news reading. “It’s all about breathing from your diaphragm,” she said, as she made us read The Big Friendly Giant aloud, then lie on our backs and go “ohhhhmmmmm”. Once, I confessed to her that I wanted to sing. “Everyone can sing, darling,” she assured me.

When I am in the car, it’s: “Hello, Wembley!” I am currently radio-less and I have a long commute, so M&M’s greatest hits are bellowed out unaccompanied. At the moment, I have a penchant for The Levellers’ One Way, but Simon and Garfunkel, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground and my very, very favourite, The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset, all receive the treatment.

But just as I hate people eavesdropping on my private conversations with the grey mare (the ones where I’m telling her she’s the most bee-ooo-itful horse in the world), I’d be mortified if anyone caught me singing unawares.

Richard the Lionheart

A big cream-coloured caravan was one of the steering wheel-smacking, angst-inducing and tedium-creating reasons why I was late home from work today.

When I managed to overtake as the A1 returned to dual carriageway, I noticed it was called a 'Crusader'. Was that because it got nowhere fast?

Town and country

I am nowhere near the first and no doubt I won’t be the last to remark on the lack of understanding frequently exhibited betwixt town and country. Unlike some, I have never considered the country to be inhabited by barely literate, fundamentalist Christians (the North) or peasants doused in a touch of Archer-esque charm (the South). Nor, curiously, do I believe that Britain’s towns and cities are solely peopled by modern-day Fagins and gun-toting or knife-wielding yobs. Having spent almost a decade and a half living and working in cities before escaping back to this glorious realm, I think I am qualified to make a judgment.

It’s a shame the people that govern us don’t appear to have had adequate experience of the countryside, though. A town Government, voted into power largely by town people, will understandably play to its audience. That’s probably why Gordon Brown is reportedly planning to punish everyone who drives a 4x4 in tomorrow’s Budget. Heaven forbid that he could make them economically less viable for those who don’t actually need them, but curiously, seem best able to afford them.

I have long considered 4x4s to be wasted if they don’t have a tow bar, don’t belong to farmers or to those who live in remote places accessed by single-track roads. But why should those who do live in the wilds or who actually need a powerful tow-vehicle be chastised because of those who run them as ‘gas-guzzling’ status symbols? I am not a city-based ‘yummy mummy’, so perhaps I misunderstand the subtle nuances of needing a 4x4 for the school run. Personally, I can’t see what is wrong with an ordinary car, or even the school bus.

Mr Brown would have us believe that he’s acting against 4x4s as part of the Government’s current obsession with green measures to combat global warming. I wonder if the equivalent of 4x4 drivers were blamed for making it warm enough to grow grapes in Roman Britain...

The Chancellor has been dubbed ‘Stalinist’ in reports today. I wonder if he prefers that to being considered a pursed-lipped puritanical killjoy?

Road Rage

Jeremy Vine is holding a poll on Radio 2 to find out what vehicle the Great British public - or at least the listeners to his show - want kicked off the roads.

Strictly speaking, I wouldn’t classify a horse as a vehicle. A cart, yes, a gig or a coach, obviously - but not a horse and rider. However, members of the anti-horse brigade are coming out of the woodwork for their perennial moan about being forced to slow from the 90mph they think is justified on narrow country roads.

The majority of the drivers where I live are decent but the place is a tourist trap in the summer and you don’t know what you’ll meet when you sally forth. What these big boy racers – and I used the term advisedly, because most young boy racers round here are gentlemen when they pass a horse – don’t realise is that it isn’t just the horse and rider that might die: they could too.

I wave, smile and acknowledge motorists who do the right thing. Riders that don’t are doing their peers a disservice. But idiots receive the Paddington Bear hard stare - I am the mistress of the hard stare - and if they’ve been particularly stupid, they are treated to a range of gesticulations and the full complement of curses. I think the Highway Code should include a section whereby riders are encouraged to whip the roofs of cars that pass too close and fast.

I find it ludicrous when they start on the “You don’t pay road tax” tack. Perhaps not, but horses don’t cause potholes or belch planet-and-people-destroying fumes into the atmosphere either. Most riders are also insured up to the eyeballs, partly because of our compensation-driven culture. We live in a world where if a car speeds past a horse, spooks it, and the horse sits on the vehicle, the rider is at fault.

"You should ride off the roads,” also cracks me up. We don’t all own swathes of land and Britain’s bridleway network is a long way from being joined up. Often, the bridleways that do exist attract 4 x 4s on a jolly away from the city or horse-scaring scrambler bikes turning the track into muddy ruts.

Horseboxes are also scoring highly in Jeremy Vine’s poll. So - horses shouldn’t be on the road, nor should they be transported to the bridleways. Ken Livingstone will effectively stop horses being moved across the capital if his Low Emission Zone gets the nod.

I don’t get it. And for those of you who don’t get where I’m coming from, I’d refer you to my favourite poem.

Besides, we were there first.

Move over, darling ...

I have spent much of today feeling very stupid.

No one told me that driving a car without a fan belt could make it very ill.

I dragged a male colleague out to the car park to have a look. I pulled the lever to open the bonnet and it came away in my hand. A Paddington Bear hard stare and a string of expletives - the sort normally used on drivers who don’t indicate, pull out in front of me, drive more slowly than me and commit other such crimes against commuters - miraculously did the trick and the bonnet opened.

“It’s gone,” said Male Colleague, pointing to where the fan belt used to be.

“But where’s it gone?” I said, peering hopefully into the engine, imagining it was nestled somewhere in the car’s insides and could be retrieved like pennies down the back of a sofa.

“It’ll have fallen out on the road somewhere,” he said, looking at me as if I was stupid.

I felt even more stupid when I couldn’t remember the name of my insurance company, to which I pay lots of money for a breakdown recovery service. I did remember it had been taken over by another company which had something to do with pigs, because they sent me a nice metal piggie keyring at the time. Then I couldn’t remember my car’s registration.

But eventually, Zurich sorted out a nice man from Green Flag. He took rather a long time to put a fan belt on. Every time I looked out of the window, he was elbow deep in engine innards. Apparently none of the fan belts he’d brought fitted and he’d had to go and find another one.

“You should’ve just used a silk stocking,” said Male Colleague, “like the woman on that advert.”

This time, it was my turn to look at him as if he was stupid…