Monday This then, is my new home. A red V-reg Vauxhall Corsa, with a plastic Bugs Bunny on the dashboard, and Mozart in the tape machine. This will be where I spend most of my waking hours for the next five days.
Tom Taylor doesn't allow me a moment's contemplation. "D'you think you can reverse out of this space?" he asks cheerfully, having come to meet me at Chester station. Tom Taylor is to be my instructor for the week. He's got controls on his side too, I notice with relief, trying to work out where reverse is. "The week ahead is going to be hard on both you and me," he tells me, sitting back as we judder out onto Chester's highways, and pausing to ease me away from a couple of menacing bollards. "I'm going to work you as hard as possible for the first couple of days, then I'll start to ease off a bit on Wednesday, and hopefully, by Thursday, when you do your mock test, you'll be feeling pretty confident. But I warn you now, we'll both be knackered before it's all over."
He's right, and if I'd thought about it all a bit more, I would have realised that a concentrated course was not going to be a week's relaxation. It seemed a brilliant idea to just get the bloody thing out of the way in one go, after years of people saying incredulously "You mean you can't drive at all!" A concentrated course meant I'd start on Monday, have my licence by Saturday, and not have to faff around with the practising and booking lessons bit that had always foiled me before. As I jerk to a halt at the traffic lights, and stall for the third time in 10 minutes, it begins to dawn on me that perhaps slightly more time to absorb the bits and pieces of a pretty complicated activity might help. But sod reflection. Why have the windscreen wipers come on?
Tom and I get on well: his slight resemblance to the dad in the Royle Family (with the same fondness for dodgy jokes) helps. He folds his hands over his tummy, and is totally relaxed: it doesn't seem to matter what I do (apart from some of my closer parked-car passes), nothing fazes him. Within a few hours of arriving, I'm stalling on a dual carriageway, instead of just stalling on a driveway. Ah, progress.
Tuesday Having spent Monday night strolling in a relaxed way round Chester I wake up in my little bed and breakfast full of energy. The Corsa seems like a familiar and welcoming place, and it turns out that I'm a natural at emergency stops. "Perfect, that was, absolutely perfect," says Tom happily.
I also seem to have a natural talent for reversing, even uphill. Trundling round the gorgeous little village of Ecclestone, my hill starts are truly horrible, but I can reverse up anything. Tom thinks it's got something to do with left brain/right brain balances, which is especially interesting because I've been reading Oliver Sacks and thinking about brains ever since I got here. I try to explain about this man whose sight was restored after 40 years of total blindness, and how hard he found it to adapt and make sense of what he was seeing, and how that reminded me of trying to adjust to using mirrors. But the car stalls, as usual when I start thinking about anything other than the clutch. Tom rolls his eyes and puts the handbrake on.
But it's true, I do seem to be able to reverse much better than I can go forward. We both consider the possibility of just going everywhere backwards. After a day of stalling at almost every junction I've come to, it has a certain appeal.
Wednesday Tom and I are both getting a little snappy with each other. "Use your bloody mirror," Tom hollers at me. "I did," I scream back, swerving round a car slightly more energetically than intended. "You just weren't looking." I always forget how much I hate being told what to do - it makes me very short-tempered indeed. Perhaps tiredness is also making me short-tempered. Yesterday's eight hours driving, after Monday's eight hours, have taken their toll. My shoulders ache, and I've got a funny nagging feeling in my left hip from pumping the clutch all day.
Doing reverse parking in the morning is fine but I've developed an infuriating habit of jerking my foot off the clutch in first. "There's that suspender belt again," says Tom, as we bounce out of a set of traffic lights, and then die on the turning. "I know," I snap irritably. Fortunately the Guardian photographer arrives for the afternoon, a very nice, calm man, whose presence makes us both behave ourselves. Although sensing him wincing from the back seat as I kangaroo hop through a green light is a little disconcerting - as is the hasty way in which he does up his seatbelt.
Thursday Tom and I are going to kill each other soon. I think he feels that his career and the reputation of BSM depends on him getting me through, and as a result it's worse than being out with my dad. And the quiet suppers for one with a good book and a single glass of red wine that had so much charm on Monday night are just boring now, especially as I'm desperate for someone to have a really good moan at.
I take a mock test today, and am so ridiculously tense that the tester actually talls me to stop the car and please, please, please relax. I keep hearing Tom's voice telling me what I'm doing wrong, but once I've let go of that the driving is fine - things click. But I still fail the test on six counts: it's well and truly dawned on me that I'm going to fail again tomorrow.
Friday I think we both feel a bit guilty for getting in such a snit yesterday. When Tom comes to pick me up this morning, he decides to take me off to the Welsh hills for a little run. The roads are beautiful - magical valleys and wonderful views, and my driving improves exponentially, the gears gliding up and down until I start to feel like Mika Hakkinen. We get back to town (the test is at 2.30) both well-pleased and glowing with the fresh air. "You'll be fine, love" says Tom. "I know I've hammered you a bit this week, but you're a nice little driver, so don't worry too much." I find out later that he's told everyone in the office he thinks I'm going to pass.
My stomach has bunched itself up, and I feel knackered at the same time. Tom waves me off, looking as nervous as I feel (I hope I don't let him down), and for the first five minutes, things seem OK. And then disaster strikes: one of my classic lurching gear changes means I lose control for a second. It's only a second, but that's long enough. I keep going, but feel so tired I can hardly sit upright. Eight hours of utter concentration on driving every day this week is making itself felt in every inch of my body.
Tom looks so disappointed. I get a bit teary for a second, then pull myself together. We go for a quick lemonade together, slumping disconsolately in the pub, trying to cheer each other up, and I give him a bottle of whisky for thanks. "Now love," he says affectionately. "I want you to book your next test as soon as possible, and you're sure to pass this time." We say goodbye and hug, and I promise to let him know what happens. The cabbie who takes me to the station failed his first time, he tells me. Which makes me feel a bit better. But, he tells me thoughtfully, his wife passed. Bother.
