I’m not the best driver in the world. Even if you don’t know me then by now you must be getting that impression. I become very affronted when confronted with this information, but I have a habit of taking bits off my car by colliding with inanimate objects. I failed my driving test twice, the first time so spectacularly that when I got into the car for the third test and saw the same examiner as the first, I nearly died. I passed (go me!) For example, my Friday was going relatively well until my boss left for the day and came back two minutes later. “Laura, could you remove your car….. from my car?!” it turns out that the dodgy hand brake that Betty was suffering from pre MOT is not fixed, and she has rolled backwards down the steep hill that the office is nestled on, and embedded herself on a Porsche. My bosses Porsche. I understand, it’s like men isn’t it? We gravitate to the most dapper looking one, maybe my car is the same. But it left me with a red face, yet thankfully, no damage bar a little scuffing to the number plate. All that could go through my mind was the amount that my Uncle had to pay to get a crack in the bumper of his Aston Martin fixed. $5000. I envisaged having to live off corn flakes for the rest of the year at least.
But I try my hardest and am relatively good with other people on the road. It’s just fences and kerbs that better watch out for me. But I get the rage when I’m in a hurry to get somewhere and I’m on the dual carriageway and there is someone in the outside lane when there is no one in the inside lane. They are almost never doing the speed limit, are nearly always male and more often than not driving some sort of Chelsea tractor (to my non brits, that’s like a jeep or range rover). This morning it was a man (check!!) driving a BMW X5 (check) in the outside lane with nothing for miles in the inside lane, doing fifty. In a seventy speed limit when I’m cutting it super fine for work and having to do my makeup at the lights, this is not ideal. I am far too much of a good girl to undertake because knowing my luck a police car would come whizzing out of a bush, or the annoying man in the BMW would actually be a policeman, so I sit there patiently, waiting. I don’t even flash (see previous policeman comment) so I just get more and more annoyed until I want to pop. It does no good, apart from increasing the potential of me popping a blood vessel in my otherwise sparkling peepers.
This teamed with my lack of happiness in the morning doesn’t make for a happy little princess. I sit at my desk for an hour mainlining tea and making sure I triple check emails before sending to make sure I haven’t put kisses at the end (I really have to watch myself with this. I’m a natural xxx at the end of a text message person, and I have to ensure that I am remaining professional when sending passive aggressive emails out. ‘Please ensure this is paid today. Xxx’ doesn’t have the same authoritative tone).
Thank goodness it is nearly the weekend and I am getting cheery texts about digging ditches to cheer me up, plus I have Gym Class Heroes featuring Adam Levine (who else, I mean really?!) on repeat.
What kind of driver are you?
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Tinkerbelle 
I love this – I used to have a big problem with driving vs inanimate objects as well! Fences, light poles, houses… (yes, houses!) I seem to have grown out of it now, somehow, and turned into a basically pretty good driver who possibly goes around corners too quickly but can reverse parallel park her boyfriend’s car when even he can’t manage it. So, there’s hope for you yet!! 🙂
I am 46 years old and I don’t have a license. I had 85 driving lessons back in the 1993, when I began teaching, in an attempt to get a driver’s license. I’d driven cars before, but not on the ‘Queen’s Highways’. I was so bad at predicting traffic, reading signs and following the rules that I was once put out of a car 3 miles from home by an instructor because I scared her. I stopped bothering to have lessons after that and accepted my fate. Don’t get me wrong I can handle a car, it’s traffic that I find hard to cope with. I could drive in a demolition derby/ stock car race, or drive a jeep or humvee through a war zone or battlefield, because no-one would be worried about me hitting vehicles or other things. It’s the civilized roads of the nation that I find impossible to cope with. Too many cars and too many rules. Too much to think about as I drive. I get public transport and walk. There can’t be many 46 year old smokers who can walk 5 miles to a night job and walk back the same distance; which I did last Christmas and that was in the snow! I think that because I don’t drive I’m fitter, slimmer and healthier than my friends who do drive. I think nothing of walking 2 miles to the supermarket and carrying back six to eight bags of shopping and I usually beat the bus back because they are spaced so that I can get to my house before the next one has passed me; not bad over two miles. So I’m a bad driver, but I think that not driving has done me a lot of good.
To be totally truthful, I am actually a very good driver. I learnt when I was 12 driving a tractor. Got my licence at 15. I can back a trailer.
Learn to breath on the carriageway!
I like to touch both sides of my lane frequently, otherwise known as weaving. I realized long ago that other drivers tend to give me more space if they think I’m out of control, intoxicated, or just careless. Of course, swerving is sometimes necessary just to keep everyone on their toes, and in the country anything goes. Oh, by the way, were you trying to go around just the other day?
Checking out your blog today for the first time. I cannot identify any of the music in the latest blog, but then I don’t listen to music anymore, except the occasional opera. I am an old fuddy duddy trying to understand youth cuture. The one thing we do seem to have in common is taking bits off our car. I am an exceedingly careful driver, but I still hit the odd piling or curb. My 82-year old husband is worse. Thank goodness he cannot drive his red Fiat anymore owing to a stiff leg. Dianne
Dianne, i am in my twenties. I hope im still driving in my eighties, but the way im going i think someone might tae the keys off me long before that! thanks for stopping by 🙂
Hmmm I think I am a pretty good driver, however the honking on the road and my passengers who grab tZhe oh s..t handle may say otherwise. I try!
I used to own a motorcycle until it was stolen so I never passed my test.
Fortunately I get Disability Living Allowance so I can afford taxis!!! 🙂
Love and hugs!
Prenin.
I am a terrible driver, too absent-minded, I like to observe people and buildings and landscapes. Three teachers tried to teach me how to drive, one of them ran away when I almost drove into a church! Somehow I obtained my driver’s license though, but don’t worry, I never drive, since I know I am not good at it.
Hahahaha… ‘Please ensure this is paid today. Xxx’ doesn’t have the same authoritative tone’
Now that is funny…I am following you on twitter now 🙂
I don’t know if I’m a good judge of my own driving prowess… However, this post is rather coincidentally poignant (interesting choice of words, but bear with me…) as this morning I had to swerve quickly to avoid not one, not two, but three potentially nasty accidents where persons of dubious driving acumen pulled out in front of me. I happened to be moving along at 75mph in a red car on a four lane divided highway, and these imbeciles somehow overlooked me and pulled out, from a stop, directly into my lane and did not accelerate as if their life depended on it.
Apparently, I missed the memo that today was almost-get-killed-on-your-way-to-Spanish-class day.
Hi Laughteriscatching, your post is so funny!
Here in the states one has to know how to drive especially where I live in the rural countryside.
When someone is driving too slow or too fast, one has to just forgive oneself for thinking badly of them and go on. Some times rage is seen in the finger or fist but it usually is the young bad drivers that do that.
Thank goodness I don’t commute anymore. It used to be an hour each way in rush hour traffic.
You’re not alone in your frustration with those drivers choosing to pot along in the passing lane! Here in Texas, I’ve found the people to be far more polite and thoughtful than I’d been led to believe–except on the freeways. I come from a state where you’ll just plain get pulled over if you linger in the passing lane when not going faster than the general flow of traffic (i.e., passing), so it was a shock to move to TX and see that it’s downright commonplace to impede everyone else that way, and that even big semis (lorries) do the same. And apparently, vehicles in Texas are born without turn signals. And drivers’ training here evidently doesn’t include any mention of How to Merge. So my spouse and I are trying to suss out a whole new ‘skill set’ for driving here. If I could just get drivers out of their cars, I think I could reason with them, Texans being such generally friendly folk, but once behind the wheel they seem to forget that there’s anyone else on the road. Sigh. Perhaps you’re safer staying where you are, my friend!
So funny about the xxx.
Heard a podcast once from a guy who saw lol, thought it meant lots of love and used to put it at the end of all kinds of emails – including condolenses. Pretty funny.
Hi, I’m here via Janie, and I’m glad to meet a kindred spirit driving-wise (except I’d have flashed the guy, I have actually flashed at a car at night-time that turned out to be a police car).
Ha! I would say I’m a defensive driver, thanks to Babs (Mom). Which is the only way to survive New Jersey driving. I’ve gotten one speeding ticket and one driving ticket in my life. If I won the lottery, I’d definitely hire a chauffeur before a chef!
Haha unfortunately i’m one of the slow drivers, but most of the time I’m going the speed limit or faster, and people still find the need to drive around me and cut me off so they can go the exact same speed as before. Maybe it is just Texas? As far as accidents Iv’e gone over plenty of curbs and backed into my dad’s car with my brand new car, so i’m no longer allowed to call it new.