learning to drive

my agony. my pain.

My thirties have been about proving to myself that I’m not, in fact, comically bad at doing everything and a massive idiot. For example, I was convinced I wasn’t competent enough to get a dog, so I challenged this by bringing up a furred lady of impeccable deportment who is a credit to society (ok she bit the groomer and yesterday got kicked out of our favourite coffee place for barking, but she’s mostly pretty good). I also recently travelled to Australia on my own without losing my passport, getting anally searched or ending up in Bristol. I continually juggle multiple jobs and hit most deadlines without issue (Sorry Ed, if you’re reading this, I’ll write that stuff soon!!!). All of this helps me believe in my own competence.

The biggest test was always going to be learning to drive (second maybe to having a baby, but I’m not sure where I am with that so cars it is!). When I told a friend I was starting lessons she said ‘it’s probably going to be a nightmare’ and I got really upset because these were the sort of Unhelpful Remarks I’d been working so hard to counter! How did she know I would struggle?! I am a competent woman who sends lots of emails and hasn’t been anally searched! I resolved to work very hard, not see failure as an option and prove to myself (and everybody I knew, who I was convinced thought secretly I’d be shit at driving) that I could do it. Things started off well, with me passing the theory test with full marks and booking intensive lessons last October in order to have passed my test by Christmas 2023.

That was a year ago. I have now completed over 150 hours of driving lessons - I stopped counting because it became too emotionally painful - and the last lesson culminated in me crying so hard my instructor took me to McDonalds where he showed me memes on his phone as I cried into a black coffee (they’d run out of vegetarian options and didn’t have soy milk). This last lesson was in July, as my plan was to go the Edinburgh Fringe in August then come back in September to start the lessons up again and let me tell you: I did not. Let me tell you: when I remembered I would have to start the lessons back up again, my eyes filled with tears in the middle of the street like a cartoon sad person. Let me tell you: I saw my driving instructor the other day in the distance while walking the dog and ran behind a building until he’d gone, which took ages because he stopped at a red light. Something I would not have done, had I been driving.

I think my problem is I expected to work hard and experience linear progress, but driving hasn’t been like that. Despite all the hours logged in the Hell Machine, I still can’t focus on the gears and the clutch plus what other cars are doing while trying to comprehend a sign that reads ‘between 7-9pm on every third Sunday you can’t not park here unless you can’. The moment I understand one thing, another thing falls out of my head. I started to get the hang of the clutch and immediately forgot how to steer. Once I could change gears without looking at the gear stick, I began approaching around roundabouts like Jason Bourne.

You, a competent driver (I assume), may have advice you’d like to give me in the comments, but please hold your horses (and carts, which I wish was still our main method of transportation tbh) because honestly the advice does not help me. I will explain why.

‘Get another instructor’

OK my previous instructor possibly wasn’t the greatest fit considering he was (and probably still is) a one-eyed, very right wing, ex war veteran from Afghanistan who spent large portions of the journey saying things like ‘Do you know what happens if you’re found to be a paedophile in my country? You are beheaded’. After 50 hours I’d never gone beyond second gear and latterly discovered he’d only taught me how to coast. My new instructor (the one I keep hiding from) is, however, very good and patient. He taught everyone who lives in my area, and their parents. One of his students was a 45-year-old woman terrified of driving her whole life and she passed first time with him. Within a few weeks I could tell that he was a really good instructor, because I was more relaxed, and I started using all the gears, going all the speeds, we built my skills up very slowly and I found the linear progress I’d been waiting for. Unfortunately even he started getting annoyed during the last lesson where I barrelled straight through a stop sign and nearly killed us both. Then I panicked on a roundabout and yelled ‘I CAN’T DO IT YOU HAVE TO DO IT’ and I can’t stress enough how this was after 150 hours of driving lessons. Some might say my driving test was meant to be two days after this happened, and some would be right.

‘Honestly, it’ll click’

OK great, do you have a spare couple of thou for me to sink into this depressing enterprise while I wait for it to click?? And maybe a spare brain I could borrow so I don’t feel so FACKIN STUPID ALL THE TIME?????????

'You just need to relax and stop thinking about it so much’

If I could, I would. Do you think abject horror and self loathing is a preferable mental state for me? Also, it’s not like I can forget about driving and relax between lessons - I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but cars are everywhere. On the road. Parked in front of houses. In my mind. One night after yet another bad lesson (mixed up my left and right, sure, cool) I tried to numb myself with iPlayer but cars kept appearing in all the shows so I ended up watching Bridgerton which I hated. Even all these months later (3), if a film involves a car chase I can’t focus on the plot because I’m just so jealous the protagonist is able to control the clutch while launching themselves through an outdoor fruitmarket, when I couldn’t do it in a deserted cul-de-sac.

‘It’s just about practise’

I can’t practise between lessons because my partner doesn’t drive and my parents live six hours away. Also, their car is completely different to the one I learn in, so when I get back into the instructor’s car it feels like I’m driving a dodgem at a fairground. Does it make sense if I say my dad’s clutch is boingy? I can’t be fannying about with a boingy clutch.

‘Watch YouTube videos’

Unfortunately I learn by doing. I don’t learn by, for example, watching a man called Richard Fanders film his own feet while telling me to ‘stabilise the revs’. Do you honestly think I’m able to parse the dashboard, Richard, when I’m occasionally unable to tell my right from my left? Every time I try and get the bite point on the clutch it feels like its in a completely different place Richard. Sometimes I check the mirror and don’t actually see anything. Like, I look, but I can’t see. It’s just shapes and colour and there could be a horse on a motorbike undertaking me and I wouldn’t have seen it. Does that make sense Richard? Are you comprehending the depth of the situation now? Watching driving videos to help me drive feels like watching sleeping man videos to help me sleep. I can’t connect them to reality. He just looks like a man doing reasonable driving-y things with his feet but when I try to do the same, it looks (and feels) like someone is throwing handfuls of spaghetti at a row of car pedals.

‘Just remember, really stupid people can drive’

Firstly, great. Secondly, what does that make me then? A plant? Thirdly, stupid people probably learned when they were seventeen, which I should have done because I was so stupid at seventeen I threw a lamp away because the bulb had gone. I was so stupid at seventeen I decided not to learn to drive because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a brand new car like my friend Sam and wouldn’t let me learn in their nicer one, so I was going to have to learn in the big shit red one and I was embarrassed to be seen in it. Point is, when you’re young you’re naive and haven’t heard about car crashes or drunk drivers and even if you have, you don’t connect it with your own mortality. Also, your brain is more elastic when you’re younger, which is why you should learn languages and piano and driving before it gets solid. I’m learning to drive with a wooden brain, which isn’t impossible but it’s much less preferable. You can learn anything at any age, but it’s better to safely struggle with scales or conditional tenses than having to intuit which direction people are going on a roundabout ‘by their position on the road’ because nobody indicates properly, like fuck off what. Maybe that would be easy for a seventeen year old. I suppose what I’m saying is: I know too much to be good at driving now my oak brain is so hard.

‘Maybe you’re just one of those people who shouldn’t drive’

Never say this to someone who is struggling to drive, unless you gave up the driving struggle and are living an exceptionally happy car-free lifestyle. Usually the people who say this to me are men who can drive and my god, I react so incredibly badly to personal challenges like this. If it’s got a flavour of gendered prejudice (yes, very rich coming from someone who is single-handedly upholding the ‘women-can’t-drive’ stereotype), it sort of sends me bonko. I once ordered a Malbec from this wine bar that opened up next to my old flat in Woolwich and the bartender said ‘Are you sure you don’t want something a bit lighter’ to which I responded by drinking the Malbec faster than anyone in the history of the world and asking for something ‘a bit more complex’ with a smile made of knives. I drank another three glasses of whatever it was he gave me (don’t remember because I was too angry to hear, see or speak) and went back the next week when I saw he was on shift to do the same thing. It’s good I moved out of Woolwich when I did or I would have developed a severe issue (revenge alcoholism based on a wine I didn’t even enjoy drinking).

What’s clear is I am motivated by proving people wrong, but if we transpose this to driving, the solution would be to... drive really well. And I can’t. Can you imagine how angry this makes me?! I can’t ask the instructor for a more complex car and then drink it. All I can apparently do is turn the wrong way down a one way street while screaming and then consequently not be able to sleep for three nights because I hate myself so much.

‘Just learn automatic’

Yeah that’s quite good advice actually, fuck it.

I am legally obliged to tell you I’m doing my live comedy show at the soho theatre in London’s glittering London from Dec 3 - 7. Please come. It’s a fun show and I won’t be driving there or back.