I have been driving for twenty years. I have driven around the infamous Arc de Triomphe, across several countries and on Britain’s motorways, dual-carriageways and rural B roads. I have been through police driving school, and am trained in high-speed pursuits. All in all, I am an experienced motorist.
I am also a terrible, terrible driver.
It has taken me a while to accept this fact, despite destroying several cars over the last two decades. First I wrote off my Vauxhall Nova doing 5mph in an M25 tail-back; then I killed my beautiful MG Midget when I failed to give way at a roundabout. Next I put my husband’s car through a hedge and had to be pulled from its smoke-filled interior by a passing motorist.
My police driving experience is similarly littered with disaster. I had several Polaccs (police accidents), often without actually leaving the back yard. As an Inspector I reversed my own car into the Superintendent’s Harley Davidson; scraped far too many bollards to count; and blew a tyre on a marked Astra when I undertook a bus in Oxford city centre. To add stupidity to incompetence, when I tried to change the wheel I used the ignition key to lever off the hub cap, breaking the key and causing a rush-hour jam as I sat by the side of the road waiting for the AA.
As my police career drew to a close (not, I hasten to add, due to my motoring skills) I attended a burglary-in-progress at a rural address close to my own home town. In my haste to get there I totally failed to spot a humpback bridge, sailing in the air à la Dukes of Hazzard, rolling twice and coming to rest in a nearby field.
In short, I am a driving disaster.
But it was not until last night that I finally accepted I was not born to be a motorist. As I leapt into the dodgem car with my five-year-old daughter I felt confident I could show her what I was made of. And indeed I did. No matter which way I turned the wheel; no matter how hard I pressed the pedal, I somehow ended up facing the wrong way round. The large, overly blond woman sitting in the kiosk made several announcements over the tannoy, much to my husband’s mirth, but still Georgie and I continued to spin haplessly round in the centre. And so I sat my twenty years’ of driving experience back in my seat and let my five-year-old drive. She did a much better job than me.