Skip to main content

Driving Miss Crazy




  At my first driving lesson back from panto season, I moved off in third gear. 

  I was having the usual back and forth with Shahzad, my instructor - who, to this day, is on Beta Blockers. 

 'We've discussed this, Shahzad: you always miss me checking the blind spot on that side, so we take it as read that I did check it.'  

  Or: 

  'You can say there's nobody in that white Volvo all you like, but I'm telling you it isn't adequately stationary for use in my parallel parking extravaganza.' 
 
 And:

  'Who yet again moved the fucking kerb?'

  When I moved off in third, Shahzad became more than usually adenoidal. 'Where have you got that from?' 
  'My Marine mate, Stacks,' I said. 
  'And what else did this army guy teach you, just so I'm prepared?'
  'Royal Marine. As he's officially a master-driver he knows the tricks of the examiner's trade. He said never to park where they tell you to first time...'

  Stacks advised, 'You'll be able to park okay - adrenaline - but won't be able to safely pull out again. It's a trap.  You'll be too near a turning, other cars, emergency access, etc.  Similarly, when you're asked to pull up when it's safe and convenient to do so, it won't be.'

  As I told the examiner: 'Don't hold your breath about my stopping, love: there's a school crossing, a hill, a staggered junction, a blind corner, hazardous waste, an overfull ford, mobile library stop off, suspected grave of Lord Lucan, rutting stags, Jemima the doll from Playschool - plus I'm scared to stop the car in this part of Barnet.'

  Shahzad asked if my master-driver buddy had said anything about how I'd been taught so far. 
  'He says I'm not as Miss Crazy Driving as he'd thought I would be.  I'm calm and in control and have the basics. He does think you allow me too much shouting and swearing. He's really hoping I'll get my licence, if only to to stop me getting arrested in Iraq.'

  I was entertaining troops in Um Qasr, Iraq, when the Military Police asked for ID.  My fellow turns showed a driver's licence or passport.  My passport was back at the overspill tent hidden beneath my spare tutu, and I didn't have a driver's licence. I tried my Camden Library card on them.
  Stacks raised his eyes to Allah and pointed to me in the tutu on the comedy show poster. 'I can vouch for him being yon tiddle-iddle-thudder in the frock of many doilies.'
  Which still might not convince them, I thought.  So, I applied lipstick.  
  'Wrong shade,' said Stacks. 




  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

     I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media:   We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden.  He's between tour dates of  The Bodyguard,  and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements.  The latter, he says, being all about making his product better.   Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February.  I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters.  That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world.  That's why you've been noticing the combat photos.  I've been going for tr

Some Favourite Books - But Please don't Lesbify Dame Agatha's Denouements

  I'm too tired to read anything new so have been round the libraries taking out my default-setting books to read over Christmas. These include:    The Pursuit of Love , Nancy Mitford.   The blood-stained entrenching tool displayed above the fireplace, child-hunting over Shenley Common, Jassy traumatising the local children telling them the facts of life.  The scene at the Gare du Nord where Linda sits on her luggage to cry and meets Fabrice always takes me back to the first reading of the novel, sitting wrapped in my Welsh Tweed shawl, in a tiny bedroom on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise in Kennington.   The Pursuit of Love is romantic, hilarious and bleakly eccentric.    Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady , Florence King. When I entertained troops on the American base in Kandahar, four South Carolina army captains made me an Honorary Southern Belle. Madame Galina, they said, in all her unreasonable, high-blooded, simpering flounce reminded them of the girls

Where Babies Come From...

Haberdashery Girls... An excerpt from my forthcoming book of interviews:   Where Babies Come From. I asked people, ‘How were you told the facts of life?’ And, ‘What information were you given?’ Here is Belinda, who used to be an escort.  She is now in her eighties. My sister read about Dutch caps.  We looked at Old Masters paintings and wondered how having those funny big white hats on their heads would stop women getting pregnant. In British Guiana, we had native servants who would do the deed al fresco au natural.  From the age of five, I was playing 'sex' with my dolls.  They’d have their dolls’ tea party, a recitation lesson, then I’d have them mount each other. When we came back to England, I had a nanny.   Katrin was fresh from the convent. She was all mummy could get for me.  I expect it was a time of general strikes.  Mummy would send Katrin for breaks back to the convent meanwhile sending me for remedial elocution.  This would happen when I’d said one too many ‘tinks’,