Driving Miss Iota: Part 3, in which I reach the crux of the matter

I don't like motorway driving either. In fact, it's motorway driving that makes me most anxious. Driving in town, any bumps you may have are likely to be fairly low impact (not always, I know, but usually). But on the motorway, it's a different story.

Last time I was driving on a motorway (a couple of weeks ago), I found myself feeling really quite agitated. This is not good, I thought. So I kept calm, breathed regularly and deeply, and the moment slowly passed. Then I started digging around in myself. Why is this becoming a problem? I was in a car crash 8 years ago. Is it something to do with that? The more I thought about it, and tried to get in touch with whatever goes on at my gut level, the more I realised that this isn't about me and my driving. It's about 16-yo.

You know those mothers who tell you, when you're short of sleep, up to your elbows in dirty nappies, and trying to settle a fractious baby while keeping a busy toddler amused at a table in a café, "just wait till they're teenagers"? You know them? Well, they do have a point.

I've spent years of my life, at a conscious level and at an unconscious level, waking and sleeping, keeping my children safe. It's part of the very fabric of my being. It's what I do. It's second nature, and third, and fourth, fifth, sixth. I protect them from harm.

I've supported their necks when picking them up, covered electric sockets, put kettles out of reach, used 5-point harnesses, understood what an isofix fitting is, purchased shin pads, strapped on helmets, and not let them put things round their necks. I've taught them how to cross a street, to walk carefully by the side of a swimming pool, to check the depth of water before diving in, not to talk to strangers, not to play with sharp knives, matches and electrical items. I've cut grapes into safely chewable halves, stopped them putting marbles in their mouths, moved furniture away from upstairs windows, kept plastic bags in a high cupboard,  not left them alone in the bath, not allowed them to squash pillows over each other's faces, phoned GPs in the night, written my mobile number on their wrists, and held their hands when walking along pavements by busy traffic. Busy traffic. Whoa. Stop right there.

Now, it seems, I will soon need to stand back, while one of them takes control of a small metal box, which travels at speeds which can only be described as ludicrous when you think about the softness of the human body inside, and let him hurtle across the land in extremely close proximity to other small metal boxes, all of which are controlled by mere mortals, the majority of whom mean well but inevitably suffer from lapses in concentration and errors of judgment, and a small minority of whom are raving lunatics who can't tell the difference between the length of a car and the length of their own body appendages, if the distance between their front bumper and my back bumper in the outside lane of a motorway is anything to go by. It's a far cry from the 5-point harness.

I can sense that my recent anxiety about driving is anxiety about letting my oldest drive. I know I have to, and I know I will, but, Bloggy Friends who've travelled this road already, how on earth do I do this?

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Driving Miss Iota: Part 2

I've thought of another manoeuvre that seems to have changed since I was taught to drive.

Imagine you are at a crossroads (literal, not figurative). You are turning right. Someone coming in the opposite direction is also turning to their right. When I learnt to drive, the correct thing to do was to wait in the middle of the junction, with the other car parallel on your right hand side, and then go round the back of each other when there was a gap in the oncoming traffic, or when the lights changed. Hard to describe, but if you  imagine the two cars to be like dogs, sniffing each other's bottoms, you'll get the picture.

Now, a lot of junctions have arrows and lane markings, indicating that you shouldn't go round the back of the oncoming vehicle, but pass in front of them. But if there aren't any arrows and markings, what's the rule? It seems to be that you go in front, and usually you have to, because the volume of traffic means that it's not just one car turning right in each direction, but a whole string of them. But has the rule changed, or just practice?

Meanwhile, I was browsing through the book I used to keep of conversations with the kids that I wanted to remember, and I found some words on the subject of driving from my daughter, when she was 4.

"When I'm an adult, you'll have to help me to drive. Then when I've got good at it, I can move away and live in my own house and get married. And then I can teach the person I married to drive too. Is that what you did when you got married?"

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Driving Miss Iota: Part 1

I'm thinking of having one or two advanced driving lessons. (Thinking about it, in that way that I suspect that I'd like to do it, but won't quite get round to it, because it will never reach the very top of the priorities list.) I'm losing confidence in driving, and I don't want it to get worse.

I used to love city driving. Nipping in and out of busy traffic in my little Vauxhall Nova, being able to parallel park in the teensiest of tiny spaces, being assertive enough to be a little cheeky, but not pushing it too much. I still enjoy city driving, but I'm aware that I'm not as sharp as I used to be. And I think it's got more difficult. There's more going on. You have more gizmos on your dashboard (and I don't even use the Bluetooth phone thingy), and a GPS bossing you around.

Life is more complicated. It used to be me, the Nova, and the open road. Now it's me, the GPS, children who want to know stuff about where we're going and why, iPods which want to play their music through the sound system and can only do so if I scroll down some menu or other, and the dog in his crate, which slides back and forth if I brake too quickly, reminding me that I really should remember to wedge that crate with an old blanket.

Cars are definitely more complicated. For example, I was taught what to do if you stall. Handbrake on, into neutral, turn the ignition key. But our car restarts automatically, though it sometimes doesn't (presumably if I'm still in gear). It takes me a moment to work out what it's doing and why, and really it would be much simpler if it just languished in stall mode and allowed me to sort things out. I want to be in control of my own destiny, rather than be forced to hand it over to a bunch of VW engineers in a design room in Germany, however vorsprung durch technik they may be.

Life, cars, and of course traffic also is more complicated. Remember roundabouts in the old days? You used to drive up, stop, make sure nothing was coming to your right, and then proceed. Now, you can't stop. Oh no. You have to slow down, and filter out. Otherwise you cause all kinds of anguish. Roundabouts aren't even round any more. Lots of them have multiple lanes, with traffic lights, and arrows, and all kinds of un-roundabouty distractions. I know roundabouts that have mini roundabouts around them (Hello, Hemel Hempstead). Some of the bigger ones have roadways through the middle of them (looking at you, Headington on the Oxford bypass), and so the sign that tells you which lane to be in looks like something you need A level Physics to understand. In the two seconds you have as you drive by it.

Traffic is faster, and you have less reaction time. Do they still teach learner drivers to look over their shoulders before pulling out, or is it all done with mirrors these days? I remember that not checking over your shoulder was something you could fail your test on, but now there really isn't time. By the time you've rotated your neck backwards and forwards, two lorries, a bus and five cars have whizzed past.

I feel the rules have changed, and I've not quite kept up. That's why I'd like a lesson or two. In fact, I rather think everyone should have a course of refresher lessons every 15 years. Why not? Wouldn't that be a good idea?

I was talking about this with a friend. "I'd like to feel 100% confident that I know what I'm doing," I said. "I'd like to be behind the wheel, driving along, feeling in full control, knowing that I know exactly how I should be driving and what I should be doing in any situation."

"You mean you want to be a man?" he replied. "We feel like that when we drive."

See what I mean? A refresher course every 15 years could be a good idea for everyone.

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Changing gear

Things that happen when you've been driving a left-hand drive automatic for too long:

• you keep going to the wrong side of the car to get in.


• in a public car park, you put your foot on the accelerator and press down hard, because you think it's the brake (and you have to have your foot on the brake in an automatic to put it into 'drive'), and then you wonder why the car is roaring. Other people are looking at you at this point.


• you drive more miles than is good on the M25 at 70mph in third gear, before the CD ends and you hear the engine tone. (Sometimes don't you just wish your husband didn't read your blog?)


• you come off the M25, head down the slip road to the traffic lights at the bottom, and judder to a halt, stalling, because being on a motorway has lulled you into forgetting about the need to change gear.

And parking spaces, for heaven's sake. They're so SMALL in England. You expect me to get a CAR in there?

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