Pond – day 2

Posted on 28 July 2013 by tony

We popped to the local garden centre, marking us officially as ‘getting on a bit’, and bought some plants for the pond. As it turns out, I think we bought marginals which are too big – I suspect the soil is going to wash away and they’ll die. However, this kind of thing is a learning process, so we’ll see how it goes.

Here’s how it looks with a few pebbles and the new plants.

Hopefully overnight the soil will settle and we’ll get to see how it looks without the water being a murky brown (moments before it goes murky green and fills with algae).

We also bought some ‘succulents’ for the house, in homage to our parents and grandparents who always seemed to have cacti around the house.

They look quite nice on the window sill, next to the orchid.

Making a pond

Posted on 27 July 2013 by tony

I’ve been thinking about building a pond in our garden for ages. After cutting the grass this morning, I finally decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a shot. We can’t run electricity to anywhere in the garden, for three reasons.

I don’t have the skill to do that
I can’t afford to pay anyone to do that
I dread the day we ask someone to look at our electrics, because I fear the previous owners’ skills and enthusiasm

As a result, any pond will have to keep itself clean (solar powered pumps just aren’t up to the job, apparently). We’ve got an algae problem in the water bucket thing I put together earlier in the year, and I’m pretty sure we’ll end up with an algae problem in the pond. However, I’m not planning on putting fish in it, and if the local wild life don’t use it, then so be it.

I still want to build one!

We decided to start small, and use a pre-formed pond container thing. We almost bought quite a large one, but decided to start very conservatively initially. If it works, and it’s fun, we might go bigger. However, as it turned out I’m glad we started small. The second choice was where to place it. We knew we wanted it at the bottom end of the garden, and since you can’t really see that from the house, it didn’t matter if it was the left or right side.

Given that algae issues are worse when ponds are subjected to a lot of continuous direct sunlight, we wanted somewhere with a bit of shade. It was either left side near the fence, right side in the corner between the fence and the shed, or right side between the shed, Zorblag the troll, and our willow tree.

In the end, we went for the third option. That area gets the most shade, but still gets plenty of light as well, and we like the idea of Zorblag looking out over a new water vista.

For some reason, I decided doing this on one of the hottest days of the year, after having already been in the garden for a couple of hours cutting the grass would be sensible. I started digging. Well, I say digging, but really, it was more a case of excavating. The turf layer was fine, but immediately below that was rubble. Big pieces of rubble.

It’s a mixture of reinforced concrete, bricks, and cement blocks from the looks of it. All of that came out of quite a small hole. I was going to take lots of pictures of the digging as it progressed, but frankly, it was too much hard work shifting the stuff to think about photographing it. I started out with a spade, but ended up doing my impression of folk on Time Team and using a hand trowel. I was literally digging around each piece of rubble to find out how big it was, and then removing it. The hole ended up being bigger than necessary, because two or three of the biggest pieces were embedded in the side of the hole, which meant I had to dig under the turf layer.

In the photo with my foot, you can see the largest selection of the rubble. I moved about 8 bags of soil as well as that rubble. I am very glad we picked the smallest of the pond liners.

After about four hours, I had the hole lined with sand, and the pond inserted. I filled the sides in as best as I could, and threw down some of the better looking pebbles that had come out of the hole. Tomorrow I need to buy the plants, and get some proper gravel or pebbles for the edges. Because the lawn isn’t flat, one edge of the pool is below the grass level, while another edge is at the grass level. It’ll have to do!

The cats spent most of the day watching me working, and as usual, they refused to do anything useful like move some soil or get me a spirit level.

Bubbles is very interested in the new addition to her garden, and I’m hopeful it’ll be an interesting feature once we get some plants in it. I really only care about it being useful for the wild life, I’m not too worried if it looks pretty. Once I get some experience keeping it clean, we might get something bigger to go in the other corner.

Here’s Bubbles, with her first look at the pool.

Fear of 4 Wheels – Part 16

Posted on 25 July 2013 by tony

I can drive. I really can. For the most part, safely. Sometimes I don’t respond early enough to stuff moving slowly ahead of me in time to change lanes (like a bus, or cyclist) when on dual carriageways, and my instructor thinks I take the odd corner a bit quick, but generally, I can drive.

There are 5 hours of lessons left until I take my test, so just over 2 weeks, and while, like all tests, being able to drive is not the only measure of success, it’s a good starting point surely?

I was really disheartened after last week’s lesson, but not for any good reason to be fair. So between that and this week, after a small break, I made sure I once again drove everywhere I could with Greté, and I really tried to focus hard on checking mirrors before indicating, slowing or approaching traffic lights and it helped, in two ways. Firstly, I forgot about the ‘controlling the car with your hands and feet bit’, I forced it to the back of my mind and allowed muscle memory to do it, rather than thinking about it all the time. Secondly, I actually remembered to use the mirrors!

When I went out for the lesson yesterday it was pretty much just 2 hours of driving to places I’d never been, handling the traffic and junctions without any stupid mistakes. Sure, I’m still missing 10 years of experience and finesse, sometimes I sit too long at a junction, sometimes I get stuck behind a bus on a dual carriageway, but my instructor was really pleased with the driving and admitted she was being picky over the 2 or 3 things she did bring up.

The only moment where control was an issue was right at the start, braking as we neared the end of our street. Having driven our car for a week, I’d forgotten how aggressive the brakes are in the lesson car, so even though I was only doing about 5mph, when I stopped I put both our faces against the windscreen. Other than that it was good. As I realised half way through the lesson that my hands and feet had started working on their own, and that I never once doubted my ability to start, stop or pull away from a junction I started to enjoy it.

My instructor was trying really hard to get me driving around places I’d never been, but she needn’t have bothered. I was concentrating so hard on checking the mirrors that I have no idea where we went. My view was the road, and just about nothing else. Only when I stopped at some lights for quite some time did I realise we were behind the Broadmarsh car park, having entered Nottingham on the east side somehow, and were now headed west towards Derby. That was slightly worrying, since I know it’s quite a busy route, both in and out, but head out we did, and I handled everything quite well.

My main challenge is still trying to avoid over-thinking stuff. If you read the first post in this series, here, you’ll see that was my problem at the start as well. However, the focus of the issue has shifted. I’m no longer over-thinking the process of learning to drive and sorting out lessons, but I am spending a lot of time thinking about ‘should I pass that bus – oh too late’ or ‘should I indicate right to get around that cyclist – oh too late’ or ‘is there enough room for me and that other car between those parked vehicles – too late – breath in‘ for example.

I know I’ll get there, I’ve stopped over-thinking controlling the car with my feet, and I know I’ll get past the over-thinking the higher level stuff – the outstanding question is, will 5 more hours be enough to convince the examiner I’m safe to drive.

Debian and KVM

Posted on 19 July 2013 by tony

I thought I’d spend a bit of time getting to know KVM on Debian. How hard could it be, I thought? I might fill a few hours, pass the time.

How wrong could I be!

It passed about 7 minutes.

apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin virtinst virt-manager virt-viewer

I bounced the box at this point, which may or may not have been necessary, then started up virt-manager, configured the VM, pointed it to the Debian net installation ISO, and off it went.

I was almost disappointed by the simplicity. Guess I’ll have to find something else to play with.

Fear of 4 Wheels – Part 15 (of 9 million, it would seem)

Posted on 18 July 2013 by tony

There was nothing majorly wrong with the driving in yesterday’s lesson, over and above the normal stuff. My anticipation could be better, my roundabout handling could be better, my maneuvers were okay, but could be better. However, I was still hugely despondent when I got home because why on earth would anyone enjoy spending 2 hours being told (even in a constructive and supportive manner) that they were making mistakes.

I spend the week driving and think I’m doing okay and then expend a lot of energy during the lesson, feel drained when I get in, and just frustrated at all the stupid little mistakes I’ve made.

I honestly think I drive better when I’m not in the lesson, because I’m less nervous and so I make better, longer term decisions. But that’s not going to help when I’m taking the test which is only going to be even more high pressure. In the back of my mind I sort of hope my instructor is being overly critical, trying to get me beyond the level needed to pass the test, so that I pass easily, but who knows.

I certainly don’t.

Houses, and sleeping and gardens and grass.

Posted on 16 July 2013 by tony

I am so tired all the time at the moment, it’s just insane. I think I’m getting plenty of sleep, despite the heat, but the driving lessons are just screwing with our routine, and myself and Greté are all about the routine! Driving seems to wear me out as well, even if it’s just the 30 minute drive home, so by the time I sort food and then settle down I’m knackered and just want to sleep. Everything else is taking a back seat – including the garden which is now officially out of control again.

We’ve half managed to stay on top of the grass, and I actually did get rid of a patch of moss on the front lawn and get it replaced with grass (which now looks nothing like the rest of the lawn, obviously), but otherwise, the borders have gone crazy and the grass is patchy and full of weeds.

Despite that, we’re loving the wildlife in the garden – we’ve got pigeons nesting in our tree (which we were thinking of cutting down until we saw the nest), we’ve got dragonflies the size of small birds, and when I do cut the grass I’m often picking up and moving frogs out of the way.

Sadly, the snails and the slugs eat just about anything we put in the ground, and they’ve worked out how to climb up the side of the water bucket thing and are eating the lilies and their flowers. I can’t feel too angry at them, since they’re officially wildlife as well, but sometimes I wish they’ve give the stuff we plant a chance.

The sudden bout of insanely hot weather is doing the garden some good, drying it out after the first half of the year and the willow tree is really flourishing. There are ants nests all over the bloody garden as well, and what used to be a flat lawn is now a small mountain range!

On the house, we noticed toward the end of March that the window sill on the outside of the bedroom window was warped, and we got a joiner to come and quote for a replacement. He was great – except we had to chase him about 4 times for the quote, and then it took him 8 weeks to come and do the work (he kept pushing us back due to other stuff). We got him to pull down the woodwork between the bedroom window and the downstairs window as well. The brickwork behind it isn’t bad but it needs re-pointing. £315 for the pleasure of replacing a single wooden window sill, and taking down the rest of the wood. Could have done without it, considering how much I’m spending on driving lessons, but there you go. The joiner also thinks we’ll need all the window frames treated, so we’ve asked a guy to come over and quote for that too. That’s the royal we, obviously, since Greté actually sorts all this stuff out for us, I don’t.

We’ll need to try and remember which bricklayer we used for the re-pointing last time and give him a call as well. Looks like the previous owners did some ‘repair work’ with their normal quality.

I have a question, does anyone have any idea what the following bugs are? They’re in the willow tree, and there’s loads of them. Nearly every leaf has what looks like a tiny one underneath curled up, or larger ones moving around. They’re black with a shock of red and they look spiky!

EDIT: They’re ladybird larvae. Awesome.

And lastly, here’s Bubbles enjoying the shade offered by the willow tree (which made me very pleased we’d planted it).

And here’s our pigeon.

I didn’t think …

Posted on 15 July 2013 by tony

When I started writing the Fear of 4 Wheels blog posts, I really didn’t anticipate there being this many. I would have come up with a better numbering system than just ‘part 14’.

That is all.

Fear of 4 Wheels – Part 14

Posted on 14 July 2013 by tony

The subtitle of today’s post is ‘burning brakes and near misses’. Sitting in a car you don’t own with a driving instructor who has their own brake and clutch, and doing 70mph along a dual carriage way is one thing. Sitting in your own car, with the most important person in the world next to you, knowing they can do nothing to physically help, and driving at 70mph along a dual carriage way is a different proposition entirely. There’s a certain amount of trust you have to have in your own ability, and an immense amount of trust that your wife (in my case) has to have in your ability as well.

I’ve been driving our car fairly short distances (other than the first time), basically to work and back. It doesn’t take long, I know the route, and it’s busy enough that I spend most of the time at less than 20mph. I don’t have to think too far ahead because I know what’s coming up, and although I don’t drive it perfectly, the mistakes I’m making are mostly technical rather than planning. i.e. stalling, or being in the wrong gear, rather than not slowing down enough, or taking the wrong exit.

Given that, and given how badly I think I did in last week’s lesson with long driving and new areas, I really wanted to get a good run in our car, including somewhere I haven’t driven before. So today, we drove to Alfreton – A52, A61 and then A38 (roughly). I drove Greté to the shop in Alfreton that sells vaping supplies, since she’s given up cigarettes. That’s probably the best example of the two life changing things we’ve done this year.

Before going over, we popped to Tesco and into the petrol station – which is another first for me. Obviously I’ve put petrol into our cars many times, but also obviously, it’s the first time I’ve driven onto the forecourt myself. You’ll be pleased to know that I didn’t crash (in slow motion) into a petrol pump and cause an explosion the size of a small nuclear weapon (which was the thing at the forefront of my mind as I pulled up). I was in the wrong gear, and the end was a bit clumsy, but otherwise, success! I think the guy behind me who was hoping I was going to pull away 2 seconds after I got back in the car was disappointed, I suspect he almost went around me before I finally started to move away.

After that it was onto the A52 and 70mph towards the A61. There’s something weird about being in control of a car on roads that you’ve been a passenger on a lot, you have to remind yourself that unless you steer, you’re not going to be going home in one piece. I wonder if learning to drive when you’re young is different? When I’m a passenger with Greté on journeys, especially to places we’ve never been, I’m playing co-pilot. I’m looking for road junctions, checking maps (these days, on the phone), anticipating what’s coming up, and hopefully helping out. I’m part of the driving process already, to a small extent. I think it’s different when you’re young, you’re totally free of any responsibility while the ‘grown ups’ in the car do the driving. So now that I’m driving, having spent 42 years being a passenger, it’s very easy to forget that I am driving, and I have to really focus and concentrate.

Anyway, other than getting a little close to the kerb at one point (Greté actually squealed ‘kerb‘) while heading towards the A52, and floating a little close to the kerb on the A52 (I was checking my mirrors) everything went okay, until we turned left onto the A38 instead of right, and went south for quite a way. We eventually noticed, turned around, and went north instead! We passed a bunch of roundabouts, most of which I felt I handled well, with okay anticipation and hopefully the right level of control, and eventually entered the outskirts of Alfreton. It was a bit of a relief, since most of the trip there was 70mph, and I was happy to get back down to 30 or 40.

We drove into and then sailed straight out of Alfreton, missing our right hand turn, since neither of us knows the place very well. That’s fine, not a driving fault, just a lack of knowledge of the area, so I kept going, took a right into a road I hoped I’d be able to turn around in, and we found ourselves doing 40mph along a 60mph limit country road in the middle of no-where.

Okay, so this was a new challenge – very narrow roads, high hedges on both sides, and at one point, full tree cover up and over the road. If you do your theory test and watch the hazard perception videos, this is just the kind of road every manner of hazard likes to hang out in. Bendy, twisty, and driven at full speed by the locals. I think the guy behind was unhappy I was doing 40mph but there was no way I was going to go any quicker than that. I knew the road signs were going to be almost right on the junctions, and I was hoping for a left hand turn.

One finally presented itself, so I went left onto what looked like a small road heading towards a village, and the guy in my boot went the other way. I could either follow this road, perhaps into the village from The League of Gentlemen, or I could try and turn around. Within a very short space there was a large driveway on my right, and before I could talk myself out of it, I’d slowed, indicated and turned onto it. I was a little nervous, since the road bent to the right almost straight after this driveway. It was too late now though, so I popped it into reverse, backed out in as controlled a manner as I could, whacked it into first and headed back toward Alfreton. The whole thing had been a little unsettling though, and my control got worse, over-revving pulling away, not changing gears early enough, and at one point, not long after a t-junction I noticed a slight burning smell and the handbrake light, so I took the handbrake off properly.

I did the handbrake trick again not long after that but I noticed it straight away, and so I started concentrating harder on fully disengaging it before pulling away. We made it back to Alfreton, took our turning (now a left) and found somewhere to park. The car park was empty, so I didn’t have to demonstrate my elite parking skills. Including the detour, I think the whole route was about 40 miles and took around an hour, which I was pretty pleased with.

The return journey was only 28 miles, and took us around 50 minutes.

After such a successful drive up, I was looking forward to the drive home and we left Alfreton without any trouble. There were a couple of roundabouts on the way home that I went around too quickly, and there was a moment or two of incorrect indication (I thought I was going right, instead of further on and right at a roundabout), but in general, until we got back onto the A52 everything was okay. I was certainly feeling a lot better about the drive than I had during the lesson, but then, I didn’t have someone telling me every approach to every roundabout was wrong, which may have had something to do with it.

However, as we neared the end of our journey on the A52, and moments after we were talking about slip roads and how you should always make sure you’re up to speed, I got my first lesson in why the blind spot is called the blind spot, and why they are not joking when they call it that.

It’s one of those abstract things that you get told as soon as you start learning to drive – the mirrors have blind spots into which they can’t see, and so you must check over your shoulder on your right side, as well as using the mirror. You nod, and agree, but how you can see a blind spot, when the whole point of it, is that you can’t see it? You’re not really sure how big it is, you’re not entirely sure what you can fit in it either. So you dutifully try and remember to check over your shoulder, and you get used to not seeing anything, and you get used to trusting the mirror.

And so you end up on the A52, travelling in the left hand lane at about 65mph with an on-coming slip road coming up. On it, you see a couple of cars quite close together with the one in front clearly sporting a nervous driver and slowing down. You think, I know, I’ll pull into the right hand lane, give them a chance to get on. So you check your mirror, and you see it’s clear.

So you indicate right.

And you float right a little way.

And your wife makes an odd inarticulate kind of sound.

And you see an entire fucking car appear out of freaking no where in the right hand lane right, next, to, you.

At which point, you drift back into your own lane, let the car go by, check your mirror, check your blind spot and pull out into the right hand lane.

If you’re like me, you’re now laughing to relieve the shock.

And if you’re like my wife, you’re now in hysterical fits of laughter at the near death experience you’ve both been through.

morpheus4050474 As Morpheus said,

Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

I knew I needed to look over my shoulder into my blind spot. But now, I know why. Somehow they should make everyone do what I did, in a safe way. I feel both lucky and bad. I feel lucky that I handled it okay and didn’t over-steer, and I feel even more lucky that the thing I have no control over (the other drivers) also did the right thing, and that I didn’t cause other people to crash. I feel bad for the driver who I probably gave a heart attack to, but they have a good story to tell their grand kids.

Mostly, I feel lucky that I’ve learned my lesson without anyone getting hurt. I’m sure I’ll never pull into another lane without checking my blind spot, because now I know, for a fact, that you can hide entire cars in it. I wouldn’t have believed it otherwise.

We got home pretty frazzled, without further incident, and overall I’m really pleased with how the drive went. Nothing on the route was familiar to me really, and I think I handled most of it in a safe and conscientious way. With obviously, that one notable exception.

Fear of 4 Wheels – Part 13

Posted on 11 July 2013 by tony

I’m not superstitious, if I was, I’m sure I’d end up owning a lucky pair of socks or something. I certainly don’t place any mystical relevance on numbers, although some numbers are clearly magical. So when I came to write this blog post, and realised it would be the thirteenth, I wasn’t worried. I didn’t feel anything would be particularly unlucky about it.

Which means, I guess, my terrible driving on the driving lesson that preceded this blog is all my own fault, and has nothing to do with the universe having a morbid sense of humour.

This blog post is like one of those American TV cop serials, where they show you a scene with your favourite character from the show in some deadly situation, which is surely going to lead to their death, or worse, losing their job, and a moment later those inevitable words cross the screen – 48 hours earlier. So now you know how the last few moments play out and the rest is just designed to get you there. I’ve told you the lesson was terrible, my driving was shocking, and so now, all we have to do is complete the journey and you’ll know why.

In the American TV dramas the technique is usually a lazy way of injecting some tension into an otherwise boring story. In my case, it’s a lazy way of letting anyone who wants to skip the content know that the lesson didn’t go well (in my view), so you can get back to doing whatever you were before you started reading this.

48 hours earlier

I drove to and from work on the 8th and 9th July, and home from work on the 10th before the lesson started. They weren’t particularly edifying examples of good driving. Stuff still isn’t smooth enough, I’m still stalling for no good reason and even worse, because I’ve done the route a few times now I’m taking it for granted. I’m driving what I know is there, rather than thinking about what is coming up.

2 hours earlier

So I was waiting on the sofa for my instructor to arrive, already a bit down about how the week had been going driving wise. I was sort of hoping she would cancel again, but given how little time I have left until my test (er, perhaps 4 weeks or something), I knew she wouldn’t, and that I’d have to spend a couple of hours working hard. I had forgotten though, that we were going to go into Derby, specifically so I would be driving on roads I didn’t know all that well.

She reminded me as soon as I got in the car.

I almost got back out of the car.

I managed not to – after all, how bad could it be? It was pretty fucking bad.

I am being hard on myself, because there were some parts of the lesson that were excellent, enjoyable even (in a terrifying steering wheel death grip kind of way), but it wasn’t all great. It was a pretty warm day, although overcast, so I was already warm when I got in the car. After the first hour, I was drenched in sweat and felt like my face was the same colour as beetroot through a mixture of embarrassment and pure concentration.

We started out easily enough, heading out towards the A50. I’ve been on the A50 a few times with Greté driving, but it never really occurred to me that a three lane, 70mph limit A road would look very much like a motorway when you’re in the driving seat. I had falsely assumed we’d be heading into Derby along the A52, but no, it was the A50.

This is the junction onto the A50.

And this is a close-up of the A50, note how it looks like a motorway.

Now as it happens, I navigated that roundabout pretty well, and after a little bit of slightly panicked urging from my instructor, got up to 65 on the slip-road and onto the A50, where-upon I proceeded to drive at 70mph for quite some time. That included overtaking a few vehicles and basically having a great time. Apart from the Steering Wheel Death Grip which left my hands slightly swollen and sore after the lesson.

Sadly, the fun didn’t last, and we eventually left that road, maybe via some other ones, I can’t be entirely certain, I remember a slip-road and perhaps a long curving road of some kind, and another fast A road, and then I remember getting into Derby. Which is when it all went to shit.

I will be honest, I don’t understand the advice I’m being given by my instructor, and I’m going to have to spend 10 minutes at the start of the next lesson asking her to go over some of the basics again. Approaching roundabouts, if I was going at a speed I felt was okay, she thought it was too fast and I wasn’t leaving enough time to slow down and change down through the gears. So next time, I changed down nice and early and slowed down, and I was too far away and should have left it until later. I wasn’t changing up gear fast enough, and then I was doing it too quickly, I was changing down too early, and too late, braking too hard and not enough.

Because all the streets, junctions and roundabouts were new to me, every single one of them was my own personal hell. Things I thought I knew how to do just fell apart. I stalled, I panicked, I sat at junctions far too long, didn’t go at roundabouts when I was clear, blocked traffic in narrow streets by stopping to let people go when I should have kept going and keeping going when I should have stopped.

I was soaked with sweat after 30 minutes. It was just a nightmare, there’s no funny anecdote, no light relief, just a raw reminder that if you drive the same roads over and over again and do them ‘okay’, it doesn’t mean squat when you go somewhere you’ve never been before. On top of the confusion about the advice I was getting, that just made the whole experience miserable.

There were some okay moments in the mix, a couple of steep hill starts and tight left turns went well, I stuck to the speed limit, and responded to traffic well in some situations.

But if you want an example of the kind of two hour journey it was, at one stage, about 80 feet from a mini-roundabout I was approaching too fast, my instructor said, “Mini-roundabout coming up, your examiner won’t point out any junctions you’ve missed”. I lamely replied, “I know, I saw the sign but just …” and then had nothing. What could I say. I had seen the sign, and in my head I knew what it meant, but I had just assumed it would be further away. It wasn’t, so I braked hard (not dangerously so), and then tried to navigate the route.

Later on, we used another large roundabout junction, and I screwed up the lane choices a couple of times, which resulted in us having to go fully around the thing once, and then she corrected my steering to get us into the right lane the second time.

On the way home, she told me to follow signs to a particular town until I knew where I was and then just drive home. I did, it wasn’t bad, and we came back along the A50 at speed again, with a few more moments of overtaking. But I’d lost the excitement, and ended up just sitting behind a truck for the last few miles doing 60mph, hoping my junction would turn up so the torture could end. I didn’t want to overtake because the way things had been going, it’d be just when my junction came up, and we’d miss it.

As a final kick in the nuts, when I finally pulled off the A50, and made it to the next roundabout I ended up in the wrong lane again, and had to go down the A52 for a bit before being able to head home.

By now my confidence was drugged, beaten, poisoned and shot, like the victim at the start of our American Crime Serial, so the streets around my house proved too hard even for me, and I turned into our street too quickly, and then braked too hard when someone was coming the other way further down. Fantastic. I think my instructor tried to make me feel better by saying it had been good, but I’m pretty sure she was just trying to be nice.

When I park the car on the left side of our street, there’s quite a large camber, which means getting out of the car can be a bit of an effort (basically, climbing uphill). This time, it was a monumental effort. My left leg just buckled under me, and I limped off home trying to say thanks and see you next week. Neither of my legs wanted to work, they honestly felt like lead, my arms felt like I’d been carrying 200lbs of weight around, and my brain was a kind of hazy-mush. I imagine it looked a little like blended avocado.

I could barely speak to Greté for an hour after I got in, and not long after eating our evening meal, I just went to bed. Worn out physically from the A50 driving, and mentally from the shocking performance elsewhere. Right now, I can’t imagine anyone ever passing me in an exam, and I can’t imagine why I’d ever want to subject myself to that kind of torture again.

Maybe next time there’ll be some laughs.

Fear of 4 Wheels – Part 12

Posted on 3 July 2013 by tony

Rather than write a blog post every time I sat behind the wheel, last week I decided to write up how I felt after each trip out in the car, and do a sort of mini diary. It went well on Friday and Saturday, but then I was ill on Monday and Tuesday, so didn’t get as much driving done as I’d hoped. However, here’s the three entries before today’s driving lesson.

Friday 28th June

Drove from the office to Tesco, including the uphill t-junction I’ve been avoiding up until now. Nothing too scary, and a route we’ve done literally hundreds of times over the years, with me as a passenger. I pulled into Tesco, parked in a bay (forwards) right next to one other car, stalled when his reverse lights came on and I panicked and forgot to get the clutch in. Otherwise the drive over was excellent. After shopping I reversed out of that bay. Way, too, fast – but then drove home successfully, and put the car on the drive at a much slower pace than the previous 3 attempts. Overall, felt pretty good after this, especially given I’d missed having a lesson this week.

Saturday 29th June

Drove from home to Tesco, including reversing off our drive. Reversed too quickly, but the rest of journey was really good. Need to spend some time just reversing our car around, it’s far more energetic than the car I’m learning in. Pulled (forward) into a Tesco parking bay at a very slow, controlled speed which felt good. Left Tesco, reversed almost fully out of the bay at the right speed, but too quick right at the very end. Then too many mistakes on the way home, wrong gear, changing down too early, one awkward stall due to pressure. Ended up putting the car on our drive too quickly again.

Wednesday 3rd July

Drove home from work before the lesson. Quite confident overall, and feeling pretty good about my driving – this is probably when learner drivers are at their most dangerous. One stall while sitting in traffic at a set of lights, but just restarted the car, and one stall on a hill start, as I stopped (i.e. before I had to pull away), but again, just restarted the car and didn’t worry about it too much. Cyclists are tricky – I’m prepared to go as slow as required and give enough space as required, but it’s tough to do that when the 10 cars behind aren’t prepared to let you and start trying to overtake. Challenging. The examiner will expect me to give cyclists 2 metres of clearance during the test, when no one else in the world will be prepared to let me do that.

Driving Lesson

I really am feeling much more confident about my overall driving. I have enough skill to get the car moving without any fear; I know that if I’m sitting on a junction I’ll be able to pull out in the right sized gap. Sure, I stall it once or twice a lesson, but that confidence that you’ll be able to move off means you can give up worrying about stopping. I can’t stress this enough, if you’re learning to drive and want to get one thing right that will help, learn how to successfully get the car moving every time.

I was approaching junctions, roundabouts, and other cars too fast because I didn’t want to stop. The mere thought of stopping, and what follows it (moving off) just meant I was tense. Now that I know I can stop, stick the handbrake on if necessary, and then promptly get the car moving again gives me so much more confidence at handling everything else.

My junction approaches were better, my roundabouts were better, and ‘meeting traffic’ scored my highest yet. My instructor took me down a few roads with cars parked on both sides, so very much a stop/start/stop/start process through blocked roads, and I handled it no problem, very pleasing.

As we came down through Beeston, I was chatting, and so when my instructor said ‘next left’ I just sailed on past it. We were on a road we often used to go to work, and so I was on autopilot in some regards. Given that I can’t drive yet (legally), being on autopilot this early is probably a bad sign. Anyway, we ended up driving around a bit in that area, and down near Beeston Marina, when my instructor told me to pull over, so we could do a ‘turning in the road’ manoeuvre. We’d been driving probably 40 minutes by this point.

After I stopped, I looked a few car lengths down the road and noticed I couldn’t read the number plate of the car ahead of me. At which point, I realised we’d driven the last 40 minutes without my glasses on. Luckily, I can see pretty well without them, I only need them for long distance and even then it’s a weak prescription. Still, we both had a bit of a chuckle about that (well, I was chuckling anyway).

Hopefully I won’t make that mistake in my practical exam – which my instructor encouraged me to book straight away (having passed the theory). She’s confident I only need about 4 or 5 more weeks; due to various timings I can’t do the exam in the first week in August, so instead, it’s booked for the 2nd week.

It’s a little terrifying to think that I might only need another 10 hours of lessons before I’m judged fit to pass the exam.

Subdued post today, I’m still ill and not feeling 100%. Maybe we’ll get more laughs next time.

Perception is Truth

it's back, no better than before

Monthly Archives: July 2013