Confessions of a closet provisional

So, that explains it! Passing the driving test is harder in Dublin than it is almost anywhere else in the country. It is far easier to get your test in the west and south-west than it is on the eastern seaboard.

Give me a minute to pack and I'll be on my way to Sligo where I have a 71 per cent chance of success instead of just a 50/50 one in Churchtown, a loathsome neighbourhood I've become well acquainted with in recent years. Three times I have failed my driving test there, the last time just a couple of weeks ago. I am 38 and have been driving for 12 years.

In that time, I have had two minor prangs, each resulting in no more than dented doors or bumpers. No one has suffered even the slightest twinge of whiplash on my account. I don't drive fast, I never drink and drive and I use a seat-belt at all times. But it seems that, officially, I am not a competent driver. I can still drive, of course, because in Ireland, unlike most countries, all you need to take to the road is a £12 provisional licence and higher than average insurance.

But until I can prove I can competently drive according to the rules, I can't claim that precious full licence that would allow me to hire a car, drive abroad and be free of the scourge of having to renew my provisional licence at the very last possible minute every time I have to do a driving test.

Judging by my performance a fortnight ago I'm unlikely to get the test next time either, unless I start at the very beginning and take 24 fresh lessons in how to drive around housing estates.

My driving tester had a high old time filling in a form with Xs during our spin around the neighbourhood, and by the 10th tick I reckoned it was all over. And that was before I lost concentration and took off in the wrong lane at a particularly twee and totally empty little roundabout in deepest Churchtown. Why does the test have to be in the back end of suburbia, where the residents must be fed up to the teeth with L-plated cars bumbling backwards around corners and executing noisy three point turns and hill starts?

In the balmy evenings when they take a walk out with dogs and spouses all they must see is farty little cars tooling around making choking gear changes and sending out plumes of exhaust, or endless rolling down of windows and silly hand signals.

Why don't they test you on busy roads during rush hour or in the weaving strands of traffic on, say, Pearse Street? Why not take you to a drive-through McDonalds, or to a big shopping centre to see how you manage where you have to glide in between two lumbering four-wheel-drive cars parked at different angles? Instead of monitoring how you take the corner leading from one genteel avenue to another in Dublin 14, why not test how you perform on the open road with some ignoramus flashing lights at you to get out of their way?

Is the test easier to pass in Sligo and Skibbereen, Loughrea and Kilrush because in those towns you are tested on normal roads and in and about the town, instead of in some out of the way enclave of cul de sacs?

I'm desperate not to become a chronic case and never get the test at all while all around me skittery 18-year-olds succeed after 10 weeks.

There are supposed to be all sorts of ways to get the driving test, apart from being a brilliantly in-control driver. "Christmas Eve is a great day for it," said one friend. "You can do it through Irish if you know your laimh dheas from your laimh chle," said another. A guy in the queue at the driving school even suggested that it is easier to get the test for articulated trucks than it is for cars.

Yet another friend who, like me, has been humiliated three times, says that at one stage she tried bribery, sending some person in the Department of the Environment two bottles of whiskey and tickets to the Derby. She never heard from them again and failed her next test.

Then there are all the little tricks on the day. Having the car spotless, and all the windows shut tight to make the instructor hot and sleepy. Jamming the passenger seat forward so that their nose is practically up against the windscreen and they can't see what you are doing with your feet. Smiling sweetly, arriving early. . .

My last driving test was scheduled for 4.40 p.m. and this, a driving instructor told me, could be a good thing. "Oh, he'll be wanting to get home for his tea, so arrive early and that'll be appreciated," was the advice. I arrived about an hour early and after a filthy, tepid cup of coffee in a pub, sitting in a row at the bar with other nervous nellies, I got there 20 minutes early. After the usual six questions about road signs (no problems there, I wouldn't mind sitting an hour-long written exam in road signals) we headed out, discussing the weather and how he was hoping to take off 10 days holiday through the next two bank holiday weekends.

This didn't endear him to me since by the time he would be at home having his tea I would be grinding back through traffic to the office, probably under severe emotional strain.

Off with us, then, around those Godawful cul-de-sacs and roundabouts and tricky chicanes and back to the horrible little room over the shops in Churchtown to be told that "I'm afraid you haven't been successful this time". Poor clutch control, apparently.

Cue the smarting eyes, brave smile and murderous thoughts. And corrupt thoughts. If only it were a matter of money I would slip them something. I would willingly give him a big brown envelope to get me that bit of paper. Let them have my holiday money. I just want a licence to drive.

All that wasted effort. And all that sympathy from people who got their test years ago, and, "this'll make you laugh . . . I actually crashed the car when I did mine, collided with a bread van, ha!"

The big fear now among us closet provisionals is that new sweeping changes will be brought in. Someone has even had the nerve to suggest that if all people with provisional licences were off the road there would be no more gridlock. Help!