Well, my second driving lesson was yesterday. Once again the fatalities were remarkably low (zero).
I’m gradually getting used to this driving lark. The steering’s okay. And I’m a whiz with the indicators. Really where my problem is is the clutch. That and the whole gear situation. It’s probably just a matter of practice, but until I master it, I’ll still be stopping without the clutch down, trying to take off in second gear, and occasionally panicking and coming off the clutch too fast and stalling the car.
And I won’t talk about the time I reached for the gear stick and got the hand brake… Andre, my driving instructor, must have nerves of steel. And maybe he doesn’t own the car?
It has been pointed out that I could’ve learnt on an automatic. But, I ask myself, where would the challenge be in that? Besides, then I wouldn’t be allowed to drive a manual, which I might well need to do, because since I’ve started looking at the prices of cars, I’ve suddenly remembered another reason that I’ve never had a car – other than "I can’t be bothered learning to drive".
They’re damned expensive. It’s not like on The Brady Bunch when Greg bought that old heap for a hundred bucks. We’re talking thousands of dollars. And the more thousands, the better, if I don’t want to end up driving a completely crap smoke belching, fuel guzzling, deathtrap of a car.
No wonder that during the lesson when I saw a bus go by in the mirror, I longed for the good old days before I went out looking for all this complication in my life.
