For the first time in my
life I am learning to drive. It is very difficult, but I’ve already had more
than six lessons and I’ve passed the
Theory Test, so you have to take your Driving Test within two years of doing
that. I am actually paying for the privilege of putting my nerves through
strenuous exercise every Saturday morning, I murmur to myself as I tie up my
laces at the bottom of the stairs, so best get on with it. My driving instructor,
John, is a hero. Pushing down on his brake pads when I’m about to slowly crash
in to the stationary car in front. Or swerving my steering wheel as I narrowly
escape clipping the white van parked by the side of the road. When I stutter
and stall in the middle of Lewisham junction, almost every time we go through
there, he fends off the angry drivers with a wave of his hand and gives
me clear and quiet instructions on how to fix this problem.
I am concentrating so
hard on driving that my neck and upper shoulders are permanently tense, and when
I go down bends on a road, it feels like when you're strapped inside a rollercoaster
by one of those over the shoulder safety mechanisms, only releasing and letting
you breathe when the ride’s over. I’m not a natural driver, but then I never
imagined I would be. I have rarely sat in a car during my growing up years, my
parents didn’t own one and I rode around on mini-buses at school, quite far
back from the driver. John says, ‘People usually pick up little rules of the
road paying attention to their parents, or whoever’s driving them around.’ Even
when I’m in a car I don’t pay attention to what the driver is doing. I'm always staring out the window at the other people and the colour of shopfronts!
Or something equally un-drivey.
Today we do a new route
to Blackheath and I find myself doing exactly that and staring out at things
instead of concentrating on the driving. It’s because I used to come here when
I was at school. The heath looks so different when you’re driving around it. It
looks smooth and manageable, but I know underfoot it feels rough and takes an age
to walk over. The No. 54 bus crosses my path and I remember that’s how I used
to get home. We follow the one-way system as plump pedestrians walk out in
front of parked cars (hazard!) and I wait at the traffic lights, with the
clutch pressed firmly half down, trying to hover for John.
Once we’re on a quiet
residential street I have to practice my parallel parking. I don’t understand
parallel parking. Conceptually and rationally, yes I understand parallel
parking, but in practice of having to make the car I am in control of do it, I
cannot fathom how. Because you have to turn your steering wheel right in many
different angles or degrees (John tries to make me understand by drawing and explaining
laboriously, pouring out his care and due diligence trying to make me see), but
when you put your vehicle in reverse you have to steer in the opposite direction.
It hurts my head and tortured neck looking out the back window trying to
understand it. For now, I will just do exactly as John tells me to and one day
I hope that I will get past this.
As I’m doing this
painfully slow reversing and neck craning, I see all shades of life through the
multiple windows and mirrors. A Royal Mail van is parked up quite close. The
postman opens his red double doors and is shuffling through letters and packages,
then stuffing the ones that fit inside his courier bag slung low below his hip.
A funny looking family come ambling down the pavement towards me, a grandma
wearing an oversized sweatshirt with NAVY stamped on the chest, a little girl,
and a grandad wearing baggy khaki clothes, walking boots, and an enormous neon
yellow bucket hat with a floppy rim. Reminding me of those stereotypical Australian
hats, with the bits of cork hanging off string. He also has a little leather
pouch. Now a second postman comes out from a side street and crosses the road
behind me, making his way to the parked van. I must wait. Next time I look
through the windshield I see the two postmen having a natter, I wonder if they’re
on eachothers’ turf? Next time I look out of my rear window, I see the grandad
smoking a pipe sat on a low garden wall, still in his hi-vis hat but no longer
with the kid.
Looking from a car out in
to the world is a very strange perspective. It’s like a moving room. Usually the view stays pretty much the same from a window of a room, apart from the change
of seasons, or maybe if you live somewhere without light pollution, the stars
will sometimes look different. But in a car you can study people in the outside
world, with no real offence taken. You can even say stuff about strangers who
are only a few metres away from you, without being heard or harassed. I guess I’m
describing some of the grounds for road rage, but I feel no rage, only nerves
and wonder.
