L plates hold many different meanings for many different people. Fellow road users, I have found, seem to think that L stands for ‘please overtake me and scare me to death’. I discovered this during my very first lesson. I was overjoyed when, on the thirtieth of June this year, I was presented with my set. I placed them on my mother’s car (which, incidentally, is blue, a little overlarge for my purposes, and has a pillar which blocks all view of the road when turning right) with utmost pride. Now, as time has progressed and frustrations have developed, as my L plates are no longer a topic of conversation among friends, family and neighbours, I have come to regard them with a kind of vehemence.
During my very first lesson, I think I may have sweat through the driver’s seat. It was twenty nine degrees in a still air and I suffered the kind of nerves which must come before a bungee jump. I feared for my life. During the lesson itself, such concentration is demanded that fear seems to diminish but certainly, by twelve o’ clock, I was not a pretty sight.
Yet I drove all the same! I drove for the first time in my life in third gear along the main road. I followed the line of the kerb to turn left and I MSMPSLed until I barely had to be told.
And then we stopped at the side of the road and I stalled. And then I stalled three more times because the handbrake was surprisingly stiff. I stopped opposite a junction, and I’m pretty sure that I clipped a wheelie bin in my haste to find a new place to park.
Since then, there have been visible improvements in my driving. Right hand turns (in wonderful L shapes) are no longer daunting to me. Neither are country roads, provided that there are no tractors, farm animals, pedestrians, cyclists, or following vehicles. Provided I can drive as slowly as I want, there is little reason to panic.
I have taken seven lessons, spaced out by approximately ten days each. I cannot afford to have them weekly and I cannot function with a fortnight between calm sessions of advice from my wonderful instructor. During lesson number six, I conquered the dual carriageway and the centre of Aberdeen. I cruised in long queues of traffic, I judged for myself when to drive off at a roundabout, and I did it all without stalling or rolling backwards on a hill start.
Confession, though, that my confidence in my driving prowess will often outstrip both my ability and my common sense. Every ten days, I have to be yelled at to stop at a junction or a roundabout. I seem blind, sometimes, to other cars and their signals, most especially in the rain, or when they are silver. I have only had a horn sounded at me once. The experience, though, was mortifying. I advise any learners, present or future, to avoid such an eventuality by being prepared to stop at all times.
And so, for now, I appear to have reached an ending. I still coast around corners. When my mother forces me to bay park against my will, I shout at her in my humiliation and hold grudges for seventy two hours. I don’t get my speed up between gear changes. I overtake recklessly and I haven’t yet practiced the use of reverse gear. I have a tendency to go from fourth to third instead of fourth to fifth and I have inflicted some damage on the front near side hubcap. I still don’t know what most of the buttons do. I recently careered through a roundabout in fourth gear. More confessions, I am sure, are to come.
To all learners who might read this, or to anyone out there who has a story to tell about the antics of learner brothers and sisters, I think we need more confessions. Please, please, please leave a comment here about your first experiences behind the scary steering wheel. If we can’t laugh about it together, what’s the point?
