In the first of an occasional series, Ed Power reveals the trial and tribulations of learning to drive, from the theory to the reality of securing the pink slip of paper (hopefully)
Telling people I cannot drive is a party trick I've long ago abandoned. They tilt their heads quizzically and glare. As though there is something wrong with you. Were I to announce that I don't know how to use a spoon or can't take the lid off a marmalade jar without putting my eye out, their astonishment would, I suspect, hardly be any greater.
Well no, there isn't anything wrong with me (I hope). In theory, nothing should preclude my clambering behind the wheel, twisting the ignition and manipulating the er . . . the thingy on the floor (clutch? gear? ejector-seat button?).
It's just that I'm a slacker of Olympic class and have a wife who finds it thrilling and fulfilling to drive me places (pick me up around eight, dear?).
Recently, though, I - by which I mean my wife - decided the slacker thing was a little tired. Also, I'm growing allergic to buses - or perhaps to waiting 25 minutes for buses that never bloody show. Driving! Now why didn't I think of that before?
Back in the dim and distant 1990s, the time between deciding you wanted to drive and being legally entitled to cut loose on the road was - other minutiae notwithstanding - as long as it took for you to apply and receive a provisional licence. Courtesy of the forces of pesky officialdom you are now required to undergo a "theory test", the gist of which, I gather, is proving you know the difference between a dual carriage and a footpath.
As I'm confident I can already tell the difference between a dual carriage way and a footpath (they're different colours, right?), it seems ludicrous that I, a Grand Turismo player of years standing, should be required submit to an exam. Also, I don't fancy coughing up the €34 administration charge.
Still, I'm never going to win the Le Mans 24 unless without laying my paws on a provisional. Which leaves no option but splurging on a rules of the road (the pain, the pain!). This, it occurs, is a little like being in leaving cert year again, only with a job and enough money to go the pub and . . . why am I studying again?
An early surprise is that said rules have ballooned in complexity since I was a kid and Judge the Wanderly Wagon dog was Minister for Transport. There are reams and reams about lane changing, headlight dipping and distressing pictures of what looks like a drunken cop waving at you (are you supposed to wave back, stuff a doughnut into his free hand and proceed on your way?)
And while the book helpfully marks the correct answer to each multi-choice section, it upsets me to learn this isn't the case in the actual exam. Nor can you bring along the book as an aid to memory. Which strikes me as absurd as I'll certainly have it open and pressed to the windscreen whenever I go driving (you can't be too careful).
The morning of my theory test finds me energetically browsing the questions over a croissant and smoothie.
There are an awful lot of them, and though many are patently aimed at weeding out the proudly idiotic, there's no getting away from the fact that several require a passing understanding of cars, roads and what have you. How ought you overtake a tractor? What is the breaking distance of a car travelling at 30 mph on ice? That there are no teasers about the wing speed of fully-laden swallow feels almost like an omission.
However, I am determined to make my appalling ignorance a strength, not an impediment (seems to work for George W). At the test centre, I forgo the touch-screen tutorial - wouldn't do for the computer to think me an amateur - and plunge straight into the fray.
As if to prove the universe is presided over by mysterious, possibly insane, forces, the questions chime perfectly with me and full marks are inevitable. I even get a certificate, which hangs proudly outside my house in a flashing neon-frame, proof that finally I'm almost one of you.
Tune in to my next column, when I go monster-truck driving for the first time . . .