Driving Lessons

I'm now in the mood to post some stuff up (and it probably will be horseshit but then that's all I thought this would ever be) and thought I'd post about my experiences of learning to drive.

Bit of background: I've never needed to drive. My hometown is small enough to walk from end to end easily and is served by a decent train and bus network. Brighton is the same and there's more than enough here to keep me busy. So a car was never really needed but recently I've felt an urge to learn. Menna bought me a couple of hours lessons for Christmas a couple of years ago. The vouchers were going to run out at the end of June so I went it.

So a couple of weeks ago I was in the BSM centre in Brighton using their driving simulator. This is something akin to the old Out Run arcade game mixed with the flight simulator off the Krypton factor. It was OK. Taught me about clutches and such like.

The next week, I had a two hour lesson. Now THIS was something else. My instructor is a rather pleasant and jovial chap called Stuart Cooper. After a driving me up to Woodingdean, explaing various things on the way, he let me have a go. Basically, after that, I was driving for the rest of the lesson. Round Woodingdean, down to Rottingdean, along the coast to Peacehaven way, back to Rottingdean and Woodingdean, round the race course, down Elm Grove, into town and up to Queens Road. Fucking nuts! How the hell did I, having no previous experience of driving bar pulling away in a mates car in a pub car park near Alton Towers, manage to negotiate roundabouts, duel carriageways, all 4 gears and Brighton town centre at lunch time???

So today I had my second lesson. Trip to Shoreham beach was in order. Nice drive out there. Bit of traffic. Driving round shoreham and getting the hang of junctions and such like. And then the clincher. Reversing round corners. Fucking hell. I've only been driving for about 2 hours effectively.

I can't wait for next week (assuming that I have enough money - BSM ain't cheap).