fivemack: (Default)
Tom Womack ([personal profile] fivemack) wrote2005-06-07 05:50 pm

Try again, fail better

Well, nine rather than sixteen minor faults, but still three major ones.

Previously I'd tended to fail for lack of observations; this time I turned my head constantly, as if a partially-deaf owl seeking an especially succulent but somewhat stealthy shrew, and mostly failed for lack of steering.

(apart from hitting the curb on the parallel park; I don't see why this is an automatic failure, tyres being solid enough that it won't damage the council's curb, and probably only somewhat reduce the life of the tyres)

Fourth time pays for all, that's what they say ...

I've spent £1592 on driving lessons and tests to date. I can't help thinking at the moment that I might rather have a dual-processor PowerMac, or four weeks youth-hostelling in Australia.

[identity profile] fivemack.livejournal.com 2005-06-07 06:26 pm (UTC)(link)
I live two hundred miles from my family, with a housemate who shouts at me sufficiently when I leave bits of cabbage on the side in the kitchen, or even suggest the possibility of spilling molten gallium on the living-room table, that I don't want to imagine him responsible for me in a car. Also his is an automatic.

When I'm in Cambridge I tend to drive around with Mum a little each day (usually to Histon to see Grandma), but I've been warier of this ever since I broke the hand-brake when taking the whole family out to the start of a walk in the middle of a set of identikit perfectly-flat fields somewhere around Saffron Walden.

[identity profile] j4.livejournal.com 2005-06-07 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry. :-(

I'd offer to help myself, but I've not been driving long enough to count as an accompanying driver or whatever you call 'em. And while I could come and put eels in the annoying housemate's bed, or poke him with a +2 stick of attitude-readjusting, I doubt if that would really help either.

Are you coming to Cambridge for the picnic on Saturday by any chance? It'd be good to see you.

[identity profile] fivemack.livejournal.com 2005-06-07 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Regrettably, the flat is small enough that the smell of eels would all-pervade. Also it would be a criminal waste of eel.

I'm tempted to go to Cambridge, if only to remind myself in five hours each way on assorted trains and lounging around in Paddington why exactly it is that I'm learning to drive ... hey, I've just been given fourteen thick history books by an emigrating friend and I'll have time to make a start.