Driving Amibition

I HAVE A new guru. Come on down Maisie Moran from Nenagh, Co Tipperary. I've never met the woman, but of late, while contemplating the prospect of hoiking two small babies around town under my own steam, I think of her with deep respect and a hopeful smile on my face. The 80-year-old passed her driving test just before Christmas after failing it roughly 10 times over the past 20 years.

She was motivated by the desire to drive herself to ballroom dancing events in the villages around her town, which is probably the most sensible reason I've ever heard for learning how to drive. Mrs M and your probably perfect paso doble, I salute you.

Already motoring around Tipp under the tabloid nickname Driving Miss Maisie, Mrs M has become something of an icon to me since I read of her success, offering as she does a vision of what I might one day achieve, should I fancy, aged 80, being able to drive myself to salsa or flying lessons. She also offers hope that it is possible to be a non-driving mother for the guts of six decades - she has four children, 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren - and still thrive.

As a confirmed non-driver I've been coming under pressure from committed drivers for a few years now. It's not dissimilar to the pressure applied by certain members of the breeding community, a kind of "when are you going to join us in the real world?" kind of attitude; a sort of "isn't it about time you grew up and stopped being so selfish?" kind of argument. (Every night when I am doing my nightly childbirth prayers - "Lord, please let me not be the biggest wuss they've ever had the misfortune to deal with in Holles Street, Amen" - I also throw in a line about not turning into a breeding bore who thinks everyone is as interested in my reproductive shenanigans as I am. Oops. Too late.)

Admitting you don't drive these days is a bit like saying you don't have a mobile phone or that you don't know how to use this newfangled thing called e-mail or that you don't believe in washing your hair. It suggests an anarchic refusal to join in and, as I've discovered over the years, some people, especially those who feel most comfortable in a pack, don't like us refusenik non-joiners.

Refusing to drive also indicates, I am led to believe, an eco-smugness, as though I must have lofty ethical reasons for not getting behind the wheel. I only wish it were true, but it's not so much that I think I'm better and more sensitive to the planet than you, more that I don't think I'm as good or as clever as you and so I don't want to risk taking my big bad self on the roads.

This non-driving business is not a personal characteristic I offer freely in the course of general chit-chat. I mostly reveal it only under duress. Mainly because the expression on the face of the person you are telling goes from surprise to suspicion, before settling finally on disgust mixed with a soupçon of pity.

I've yet to come up with an explanation that fully satisfies these confused interrogators - "But whydon't you drive again?" - so I usually make one up. My favourites are that I am allergic to the rubber used in making steering wheels or that I developed a deep-rooted fear of cars while watching Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo as a child. "And don't get me started on Knight Rider," I say.

In the end, if they are really persistent, I hit them with the real reason, which is boring, plain, old-fashioned fear. Fear that the second I get behind the wheel of a car somebody will crash into me, or I will crash into somebody else. Fear that one day I will put my foot on the accelerator when I really meant to brake. Fear that I'll get on a roundabout and never be able to get off. That last one actually happened to a friend of mine on a maiden trip to Belfast. If it wasn't for a kindly older driver, we'd still be spinning somewhere around the vicinity of the Red Cow Inn.

It all boils down to the ultimate fear that driving will turn me into one of those statistics you hear about every day, because sitting, naturally, in the passenger seat of my boyfriend's car excludes me from ever being involved in an accident. But driving one? We are talking 10-car pile up and at least two paragraphs on page 11 of this newspaper.

Yes, I am fully aware that this is all madly irrational, but you are reading the words of somebody who grips the seat in front of them on a flight, thinking it will stop the plane from falling out of the sky. It's also sad because I could be denying my true potential as a driver. For all I know I could turn out to be as skilful behind the wheel as Ayrton Senna, or better still, somebody who is still alive - Lewis Hamilton say, or even Mrs M.

Can't drive, won't drive. I look six months ahead and see myself with a double buggy, squeezing on to buses, trying to hail king-size cabs, using my boyfriend - who, the shame, the shame, bought me driving lessons for my last birthday - as even more of a glorified taxi service than usual. I comfort myself with the usual excuses of my confirmed non-driver friends: but sure we live so close to town. Where would we be going in a car anyway? And it's very very bad for the planet, you know. Then I think of Guru Maisie and I know that one day my moment, or my decade at least, will come.