The joys of learning to drive...

Like many of you, I am learning to drive. Yeah, I know, 20's a bit old to be starting this since people younger than me have been driving for three years already but y'know, who cares?
The people I'm learning with are the AA. No, not Alcoholics Anonymous, though I feel like I'm in one of those meetings when I go to these things. The guy I have is a guy called Graham - lovely bloke. Talks a bit too much when I'm trying to concentrate but other than that, lovely. He's late to every lesson so he has to add time on to my lessons, luckily it doesn't cost anything else for me. It's £42 for a 2 hour lesson. It's only gone up £1 since my brother was learning to drive and that was something like 5 years ago. I have a lesson once a week - mostly on Saturday mornings at 9am when I'm close to death from sleep depravation. Ah well, could be worse I guess. It used to be every Sunday but no, I'm not driving with all the old people and shit getting in my way.
The car I'm leaning to drive in is a Ford Focus. For me, it's the most usly car on Earth aside from the Fiat 500 but y'know, what can you do? I'm learning to drive a car that has a manual gearbox - or a stick shift as the Americans call it. It's not as hard as some people have made out but it takes a lot of getting used to. It's one of those cars that has a keyless ignition. That was fun when I first found that out. All you've gotta do it put the clutch in all the way then press a button that's near the handbrake.
Apparently I had a heavy foot when I'm driving. That means I like to go really fast and I enjoy it, which is true. However, it makes a horrible noise when you go to pull away. What you have to do it have the handbrake on, set the gas pedal so it's at 2,000 revs then slowly pull the clutch out to find the "biting point". This is basically the point where the clutch engages with the engine to let you pull away. Then you let the handbrake off and away you go pulling up the clutch the rest of the way.

Let me tell you what my instructor doesn't like about my driving:
- I tend to go over the speed limit a lot - oops. It's only a minor offense in your driving test but y'know, every one does it and it's incredibly easy to do it as well as your foot relaxes on the pedal.
- I oversteer, which is a bit weird since I'm in a car that has power steering.
- I use the gears to slow down - no, that's what they're there for. Engine braking for the win.
- Other traffic bothers me when it's behind me. It's fucking terrifying having to do a hill start when you've got someone trying to crawl up your ass. If they gave me more room - preferrably the whole road, I'd be fine.
- I slow down too early - ha, I didn't today - I almost flew into another car - oops.
- I have races with people on dual carriage ways... I quite enjoy that since I can go faster than Subarus and Nissan Skylines. Yeah I'm a bit of a girl racer - oops.

Before I tell you about the disaster of a lesson I had today, I'll tell you about what happened on Thursday. Every few years, driving instructors have to have a "check test". Basically that's where your instructor is assessed by driving examiners to see if they're actually teaching properly and whatever. Yeah, they asked Graham if one of them could sit in on my lesson. I didn't mind - the extra pressure wasn't going to be good but y'know. So on Thursday, Graham came by, drove down to the test centre. The reason I didn't drive down is because you've have to go on a motorway and I can't drive on them while I'm still a learner. Anyway, we got to the town and Graham had me drive around a little bit - speedbumps are not fun to dive over - I fucking hate them. Ha, right, I had to do a hillstart and I rolled back a little bit and this girl sitting behind me actually thought I was going to hit the bumper of her car. Bitch pelase, if I wanted to, I would've hit it - hard. It's what she gets for crawling up my backside.
So anyway, we got to the test centre thing - Graham left me in the car so he could meet this guy Lynton who would be sitting in on my lesson. About 15 minutes after he'd left me, Graham came back with two guys. Mhm... I was going to have two men sitting in the car while I was driving. Lynton - I knew about, he's a driving examiner and he's actually going to be there when I take my driving test.The other guy, Phil, was there to assess Lynton. What is so hard about assessing people? Really? Everything actually went ok with those guys in the back. I deid keep looking at them in the rearview mirror though just to see if they were still there. They're not allowed to talk to me during the exam thing you see. Everything went fine, apart from the fact that some guy almost took my front end off at a roundabout, thank you.

Yeah, the same thing happened in today's lesson. I was at a roundabout - a proper bitch of a roundabout that you have to do a hillstart on to get onto it and do it quickly. There was traffic leading up to the junction thing so I slowed down, stopped behind them, got myself doing the hillstart and was on my way. Then some guy came out of nowhere as I pulled out and cut across me. I stopped, still on this hill - somehow managed to save the engine from stalling. So I sat there, juggling the gas and clutch pedals, trying to stop myself rolling back and Graham's screaming at me to pull away even though I couldn't otherwise another car was going to hit me. Yeah, I was not impressed with that.

Other than that, driving is pretty alright. It's just stressful really, well, it is when you're learning. Oh and I got stuck behind someone driving a car with an automatic transmission. Have I told you lately how much I hate British people who drive automatic transmission? They crawl along the road then to slow down they just take their foot off of the pedal. They don't slow down gradually, like I would, no. They slow down instantly - since the engine changes gear automatically. The amount of times that moron slowed down when it wasn't necessary. I had a good two second gap between him and I then he would slow down, making my gap smaller - which is dangerous for me since he could stop suddenly, I'd go up his ass - doing my front end in, someone would come up the back of me - doing my rear end in. Ugh.

Here is where I end my complaining :) Thank you for reading, I love you and shit.