On this day

in 1988 I passed my driving test - of course I did it FIRST time!! Back then you didn't get to do your lessons/test all in one go. I applied for my test in April 1987, with the date coming through for Feb 9th 1988, TEN whole months later. Because of this I had one lesson each month; oh yes, I passed having had just the ten lessons - go me. I didn't drive any time other than on those lessons either because my instructor said I could pick up bad habits. Ooh, that's a bit of a lie. I did drive - I am using the word loosely here - around the field at my grandparents, when I say I drove what I mean is I got in (along with my Dad, brother and for some reason my Aunt) and had to reverse from the spot my Dad had parked in order to be able to do any kind of driving. The look on my Aunts face (she was in the back so I could see her in the rear-view mirror) is something I will never forget. I literally saw the colour drain from her... I put that green Chrysler Alpine (known in the family as Terrance) into reverse, hit the accelerator and 'whooosh.....' away we went. Of course what my Dad had failed to tell me at the time was how to brake!!! I suddenly have two adults and a nine year old brother all yelling at me to brake... to this day I can still hear them, their voices etched into my mind, and I can hear myself shouting "Which one is the brake?" Thankfully I managed to find it before my Dad had to yank on the handbrake, and just in time to stop us ramming into the centuries old Oak Tree that stood in the middle of the raised bank separating the field we were in from the one next to it!

The day of my test it was cold and dismal - a bit like this morning. I was booked in for 12.30pm and had my driving instructor picking me up at 11.30 to get in some practice beforehand. If it could go wrong on that lesson it did. I stalled, clipped a curb and had flashbacks of the field when reversing (I still, to this day blame that moment on my inability to be able to drive backwards well). Then came the moment the examiner got in the car. As we went to pull out of the test centre so the driver next to me did at the same time. I remembered how we should always 'give way to the right' so stopped to let them go. He started writing on his pad and didn't stop until we got back to the centre just ten minutes later! In my head I was convinced I had failed at that point, and guaranteed I had when I messed up my reversing-around-a-corner; I knew I'd got it wrong, asked if I could do it again and got no reply but I did it again anyway because I wasn't happy and had already convinced myself I'd failed. How wrong I was, and how very happy I am to have been wrong. He did tell me he would have failed me if I'd not done it again but because I'd taken the initiative he was passing me. He also said I was in the right when I first pulled away from the test centre as I was (according to him) already moving before the other car decided to pull out but by my stopping I'd shown I was aware of my surroundings. 

Anyway, in typical Sarah style I have used many, many words when really I was only here because twitter wouldn't let me add an extra twenty five letters to my tweet, and I didn't want to share it over two tweets. My reason for Tweeting was to do with Donald (the duck) and Frank (the tortoise). It struck me as I pulled up at work that Donald was in my very first car with me, joining me (if my memory serves me correctly) somewhere around the summer of 1988. Frank came along a couple of years later and they have both been with me ever since. I got hit by a 40tonne lorry on the motorway; there was nothing left of my car - the guy who witnessed it thought there would be nothing left of me - and I had no idea where the lorry was, whether he (or someone else) was going to hit me again but there was no way I was going to leave them behind!