A Month In...

I remember my first driving lesson as though it were yesterday (…this is, of course, an exaggeration – over the past few weeks, time has become somewhat blurred, especially the night time, and I no longer know when yesterday really was…).

I was sitting in a red Metro with my AA driving instructor. He had collected me from my house and we had taken a quiet back road into Harden. We exchanged a few pleasantries on the way, talking about the weather, my previous driving experience, etc, and after a few miles, he pulled over. “Do you know what a clutch is?” he said. It was clear from his tone that I needed to show some degree of rudimentary automotive knowledge before he would let me behind the wheel.

For the next 10 minutes I lectured him on the fundamentals of the manual clutch operation, including my opinions on its inefficiencies, particularly in relation to the ‘human element’, and my surprise that after all these years of improvement in other areas of torque transfer and control mechanisms, such as differentials and viscous couplings, that a more appropriate solution hadn’t yet been adopted as a standard for everyday driving. I followed this up with my opinions on the benefits of automatic transmission and my lack of comprehension over its adoption in the UK, unlike in the States, where manuals are virtually unheard of. (A naïve view this may have been with the additional cost implications of an auto, but a view that I back to this day. After all, I’m currently driving 18,000 miles a year, mostly on a combination of dual carriageway and inner city roads at rush hour. Although I love to drive, this constant stop-start motoring isn’t exactly relaxing, but switching to an auto made the trip an absolute dream, and the benefits far outweighed the additional running costs. After all, is there really a point to driving a manual unless you have a performance car? I really don’t think so. Give yourself a break & trade it in for an auto next time. You’ll be glad you did. I digress.)

After I had finished answering that one question, my instructor, looking rather shell-shocked, decided that he didn’t need to ask me any more of his questions, put down his clipboard and indicated that it was time to start driving. We swapped seats and I carefully followed his instructions. I had been practising with Kath for several weeks – cruising around quiet car parks on Sunday mornings, random pop quizzes on the Highway code, that kind of thing. But somehow, this was different. I was driving in a different car, on a road, with an instructor. Somehow this made everything more real, and more scary.

I was focusing hard. Remembering everything that I had previously learned and read. I was so pleased that I had pulled away so smoothly – no bunny hopping down the road for me, oh no! My instructor would quickly recognise that I had potential. I was zipping down the road at 15 mph and constantly making steering adjustments. I thought I was doing quite well, but it was like driving a dodgem.

“We are going to speed up in a moment” said the instructor. Speed up? I was struggling to keep the car on the right side of the road at this speed. This was all a lot harder than I had expected. I was doing fine practising in the car parks, but somehow this was very different.

“How far in front of the car are you focusing?” he asked. This was not something that I had actually considered. I thought about what he had said and then realised that I was staring down the bonnet on the car and focusing on the road about 5 yards ahead.
“Try and focus a little further down the road. In a short time you’ll automatically focus 30 yards in front of the car. You need to loosen your grip on the steering wheel” I looked at my grip on the wheel – my knuckles were white. I tried to relax my grip and continued on.

Down the road was a sign for a sharp turn to the right, and painted on the road was the word ‘SLOW’. As a law-abiding learner driver, I duly applied the brakes. “You really don’t have to slow down for this corner – I know that’s what the sign says, but it’s aimed at drivers travelling faster than 10 mph. I know there’s a lot to think about, but you are trying too hard. What you need to do is relax. Take one hand off the wheel”

My instructor spent the next 10 minutes getting me to relax. If I focus on things further down the road, I have more time to respond and have a much smoother driving experience. I don’t need to worry about what’s happening immediately in front of the car – those minor speed and steering corrections become second nature. In that instant of realisation, my driving lesson changed. All of a sudden everything became more relaxed and easier. Everything just flowed.

No doubt you are wondering why I’m recalling these experiences, Ronnie Corbett style, as I sit here in my armchair, wearing my golf sweater and big glasses.

These memories hadn’t crossed my mind for years. But after Alex was born, all of a sudden there they were. To me, a clear parallel (to others, maybe not so clear, but after all, they’re my memories…). You know bringing up a baby for the first time is going to be hard. Everybody says so. You’ve read it in all the books. You’ve ‘practised’ on other children. You know what to expect – the sleep deprivation, the lack of routine, the anguish, the stress, the disruption, the change. You’ve done everything that you can - you are as prepared as you can be. But you can never be prepared. It doesn’t matter what people say or how much support they give, you’re there all alone, staring down the bonnet, trundling along at 15 mph, holding on to the wheel as tightly as you can. You know you need to go faster, but you just can’t do any more without losing control. Fortunately, as with the driving, all of this starts to pass when you feel that you can start to relax. Start to accept some of the change and loss of control. Only then can you move on.

Alex is now a month old. Over the past week things have begun to turn. A pattern of behaviour is starting to emerge, and with that the opportunity to plan and get on with the day-to-day things in life, all the things that were taken for granted only a few weeks ago. The support that we have received over the past few weeks has been unparalleled, and without it things would have been harder. But the new realisation of parenthood is something that you’ve got to adapt to yourself in your own time, and anybody who tells you that bringing up your first child in those early weeks isn’t going to be that bad really doesn’t know what they’re talking about!