My Bannockburn Moment : a driving test saga

   

    

     The Coronavirus  has pervaded our lives completely. How can it not have? Everyday we hear of the victims of this cruel and deadly virus. On our televisions there are harrowing views of sufferers in hospitals, of victims' relatives mourning loved ones to whom they could bid no adieu; of our own imprisonment within the limitations placed on us by what is called 'lockdown.'  In our everyday lives we experience pangs of longing because we cannot be with family members and friends. We cannot give reassuring cuddles. There is so little we can do to assuage the traumas suffered by others and ourselves. .  
     During this time it can appear that the virus haunts every aspect of our lives. We struggle to escape not only the virus but also the whole social paradigm it has set up.  I've wondered if allowing the virus a monopoly of our being is healthy for us. Should we think or talk about other unrelated matters? find moments of escape? Without apologies what follows is an  escape for me as I allow myself to wander over past memories which have nothing to do with Coronavirus.

     I've always imagined that apart from those who make a decision never to drive a car, everyone has his or her own driving test story. Mine's is such a harrowing tale that I've waited 50 years to tell it and here I set it down as my contribution to motoring history.

     I attained the age of 17 years on October 1st, 1962. At my mother's insistence my father reluctantly offered to teach me how to drive and in the later months of 1962  he sat beside me in the front passenger seat offering instruction while I perched tensely behind the steering wheel of his brand new Standard Ensign and attempted to pilot what felt like a noisy live animal with a mind of its own.  These early attempts at driving through winding Warwickshire lanes were so dangerously erratic that by February of 1963 my father in order, he said, to keep himself from physical danger and to protect his sanity, decided to bring a halt to his tuition. He had found it hard to control his emotions when we were out together in the car principally because I exercised a propensity to drive into oncoming vehicles.

A Standard Ensign, a car I never took a test in. Granny and Grandad posing with their son's  new pride and joy.

   

     This brief early driving experience freaked me out to the extent that I did not lay my hands on the steering wheel of a car for another 7 years. At this time I was living in Gosfield, a village in Essex. The house my wife, my son and I lived in was off the beaten track and so it became increasingly apparent that by learning to drive, we could purchase a car and become less isolated. 

     I decided to hire a driving instructor who operated from Braintree which was the nearest driving test location.  He was a man in his early 40s  -  who, I remember, felt duty bound to tell me repeatedly that he was a Tory voter  -  and he always ate a pie, or a cake or a sandwich while he sat beside me. He gave me my lessons in his Hillman Imp, the car in which I would fail a number of my early driving examinations. 

My Braintree driving instructor

     In fairness to my new tutor these driving lessons took place in a calmer atmosphere than those I had "enjoyed" with my father though there were some hairy moments when disaster was averted only by my instructor's judicious use of the dual braking pedal which was fitted to his car. Nonetheless after about 12 lessons I began to fancy myself as having some competence and I asked him if I should now apply to take my driving test. He was hesitant but agreed that I could proceed  given that once my application had been processed I would be offered a test date 4 or 5 weeks hence and that, my instructor said, might give me time to make improvements.

      Two o' clock in the afternoon of Thursday, February 27th, 1969, was the time and date nominated for my test and my instructor presented me at the driving test centre in Braintree. My examiner stood erect in the manner of, I imagined, an ex-military man or ex-policeman. The examiners for all my tests seemed to give off this aura. It gave them intimidating authority even though they were invariably civil to me. 

A Hillman Imp  -  a car I failed in

     I was nervous throughout my first test. My left leg and foot developed a shuddering shake which was a concern since I needed them to function normally in order to depress the clutch pedal when attempting to change gear. It was surprising to me therefore that I managed to manoeuvre my way through a test punctuated only by two or three near collisions with other vehicles, while only one pedestrian had to jump out of my way to avoid being run over. As I recollect my examiner only used the dual pedal brake system twice during the test. As the examination came to an end I was feeling quite chipper and when I was informed that I'd failed the test I was somewhat disappointed. I was handed a slip of paper which was the assessment form. I found that I had failed on every skill I was required to demonstrate though my knowledge of the Highway Code was deemed acceptable.

      When I look back on my first test it is something of an irony that my knowledge of the Highway Code had been its only satisfactory factor for at the end of my second attempt to achieve fully qualified driver status, my examiner asked, 

     "Mr. Sharpe, how would you know you were entering down a one way street?" 

     So relieved was I to have another motoring ordeal behind me I momentarily became incapable of retrieving information from my mind. In my panic a response that I thought valid  flashed up from the depths of my soul and I desperately spluttered out,

     "Well, you drive along the street and when you get to the end of it you look behind you and you'll see a No Entry sign." 

     My examiner raised an eyebrow and looked at me knowingly.

     "This is important you know." 

      It seemed I may have driven down a one way street the wrong way, or at least given him the impression that I might happily do so.  I had failed again. 

     Following another lacklustre performance behind the wheel I was unsuccessful on my third attempt to gain a full driver's licence but yet just a few weeks later, during my fourth attempt, from the slough of despond came the promise of triumph. A couple of minutes into this assay while negotiating the three point turn exercise, I reversed on to the front lawn of an old lady's bungalow. She was sitting on a bench by her front door and seemed to be in a state of shock following what she had just witnessed. My driving examiner immediately got out and assured himself I had caused no permanent damage and apologised to the old lady explaining that I was a learner driver. He got into the car and asked me to drive off. I was in despair. I insisted that we return to the test centre there and then since it was clear that I had already failed the test. He appeared alarmed at this. He asked me where I had been born.

     "Dundee,"  I replied. He pressed me further.

     "And where is Dundee?"  
   

      Bemused by this turn of conversation and though I knew the answer, I replied in a questioning kind of way,

      "Scotland?" .
  

     "Yes!" he cried stridently, giving me a sense that he had got me back on the right line of thinking. "And what is Scotland famous for Mr Sharpe?"

      "Whisky?" I suggested.

Not this,

     " No!" he answered,  leaving a space for me to provide another response.

    
     "Porage?" 

nor this,

     "No, Mr. Sharpe, it is famous for its fighting spirit!"

but this !!!

     
     Patriotism welled up within me.  Just as Robert the Bruce had done before me,  I stirred myself with these words, "If at first you don't succeed, then try, try and try again!" Here was my Bannockburn moment. I determined to go ahead with the test. Certain that my examiner's appeal to my martial nature would not have been made if he had not felt I might succeed in my drive to victory, I was persuaded success was a possibility. I started up the car, drove away as he directed and went on to drive reasonably well with perhaps only a few errors more. When I completed this latest trial by torment, I felt quite emotional. I had completed this test for Scotland and myself!  He failed me. This, he said was due to my inability to carry out satisfactorily a three point turn. His duplicity in getting me to continue the test from the point where I originally wished to terminate it embitters me to this day.

     In April 1970 not long after this test we moved to Johnshaven, a small fishing village in Kincardineshire, where I had been appointed to a teaching post. Upon my arrival I immediately hired a driving instructor who worked and lived in Montrose where I would be taking my next test. My instructor, who had an Austin 1100, was a man of about thirty years who smoked cigarettes incessantly during my lessons. I was a smoker myself at the time but his style of smoking irritated me.  Once he lit his cigarette he would leave it drooping from his lips his rather like Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum used to do in black and white movies. I think he thought he was the essence of cool. 

My Montrose driving instructor

I persuaded him to allow me to apply for a test right away. “Och! ye’re no ready yet,” was his response, but he allowed me to go ahead with my test application. 

In late May I had my first test in Montrose. I thought it went quite well. I was a little slow reacting to my examiners’ emergency stop gesture and he had to operate the dual brakes once when I pulled out of a side street into the path of a lorry loaded up with sacks of coal. I was failed again but, given it was my first attempt at the test in Montrose, I was not too hard on myself.

I continued my lessons with Bob Mitchum and though he thought I wasn’t really ready for another test I believe he decided I wasn’t ever going to get any better at driving and so he consented to allow me to put in for my sixth driving test. 

   In the late afternoon of Friday, July 24th, 1970, in the Burgh of Montrose, I presented myself for my sixth driving test. The inspector seemed a rather cold and rigid man and this, when he and I sat in the car,  had the effect of re-awakening  my old shaking clutch leg problem. Despite this I managed to drive around Montrose making a series of driving errors but none on this occasion required my examiner’s intervention, yet failure seemed certain to me and I waited for the post-test talk in which all my faults would be listed. 

“Mr. Sharpe,” he said, “sometimes when I am examining, my boss, the senior examiner, sits in the back of car to check that I am keeping to the standards expected of me while I carry out an examination. Also Mr. Sharpe when I finish work today I am going on a fortnight’s holiday. I have to tell you Mr.Sharpe if my boss had been sitting in with us and if I hadn't been going on holiday this evening you would have failed but I have decided to allow you to pass. "

An Austin 1100  - a car I  failed and passed (?) in. 

    I can't describe how relieved I was to have passed. Yet over the next few hours as I slowly digested my  examiner's concluding comments I began to feel that I had gained my driver's qualification in a backhanded way and to this day I am left feeling that I didn't really pass the test. I'm not a real driver.

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