See, I always knew I was an optimist at heart. Of course, the title should read "not being ABLE to drive CAN be a blessing". Because at the grand old age of thirty-three, I have still not managed to pass a practical driving test (theory = no problem). I have taken five tests, a summary of which follows:
Test 1 - age 17. The test was booked for an afternoon in August, on which I was wearing a beautiful strappy floral dress. Unfortunately, one of the straps decided to break off during the Emergency Stop procedure, forcing me to grab the dress in order to stop it from falling down and therefore abandoning the test. One of the most embarrassing moments of my life (so far).
Test 2 - age 17. So happy and enthusiastic was I that I may shortly be able to drive, that I misinterpreted the examiner scratching his head for the Emergency Stop (again!) signal and stopped at the wrong moment, causing his glasses and clipboard to fly off and hit the dashboard. The examiner (who incidentally was the spitting image of Chris Barrie in 'The Brittas Empire') turned to me with cold eyes and as he spluttered "That was NOT the signal for the Emergency Stop" I knew that I had failed.
Test 3 - age 18. I suffer from an intense lack of concentration, especially when nervous, and flew obliviously through two red lights.
Test 4 - age 21. The examiner had to grab the wheel when I misinterpreted a line of parked cars for a queue of moving traffic.
Test 5 - age 26. After a long hiatus, I proved I was still just as capable of messing up a driving test by completely failing to reverse-park after FOUR attempts. The poor examiner was a rare nice one, but even he had his limits.
So there you go - from that little list you will correctly surmise that I, and more importantly you, are much better off with me as a pedestrian and a user of public transport than behind the wheel of a car. And in the main, I am very happy about it. Over the years, having to find inventive ways to get to obscure places of work (WHY did I only ever take jobs on wasteland-like industrial estates and Tilbury Docks?) made me see public transport as an adventure to be savoured. Sharing seats with random people actually appeals to me, as I class myself as a ruthless 'people watcher'. I don't mind the people who shout brashly into their mobiles, or who doze off in their seat and snore, or who put their make-up on hurriedly in the next seat (though I did draw the line at the woman who started plucking her eyebrows next to me on the train).
Taxi drivers are often the best source of entertainment though, as one journey in Basildon proved recently. The driver insisted on showing me his tattoo (thankfully on his arm!) which he said was his daughter's name in Chinese (he wasn't actually Chinese himself; the reason he wanted it in Chinese was a question I didn't ask). He went on to say that the tattooist had mis-heard him and that instead of 'Anna' the tattoo actually read 'Alan'. He didn't find this funny in the least; in fact he was outraged and expected me to be too, which made the rest of the journey excruciating for me, though also utterly wonderful. Where else would you get a snippet of somebody's life like that?
Not driving has made me hardier - I think nothing of walking to a friend's house, or to the town, or in fact anywhere within reasonable walking distance, which I class as just over an hour; something my car-loving friends don't understand at all. "But how are you going to GET here?" they'll say sometimes, as though buses, trains, taxis and indeed feet, had never been invented. No MOT, car tax, increased petrol prices and traffic jams are also a bonus.
(Told you I was an optimist...)
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