just another morning here

So, today’s little experiment has proved that the money spent on my towing/driving lessons was absolutely not wasted.

For anyone who’s not been reading prior to this, the story goes as follows:
We bought a folding camper a couple of months ago, having held out on towing for a while by having a little campervan, but decided that the family had outgrown it and wanted something bigger.
Steve can tow on his standard driving licence, but I took my standard driving test after January 1997 so I didn’t have the towing class on mine.
So, reluctantly, I decided that I really ought to pass the test and get the towing bit added to my licence – mainly in case of emergency, I can’t really imagine that I’ll tow the trailer much at all, but anyway, I had some lessons (18 hrs) in towing/driving and passed my test last week.
Afterwards, Steve and I had a little bet to see whether he could pass the test without any lessons, so my instructor gave him a mock test today.

He went off this morning, and I faffed around for a while trying to beat my own facebook tetris score (no way!), then Josiah and I went down to watch his reversing. We hid behind some recycling bins and he didn’t spot us until the end! That was good, as I really didn’t want to put him off.

I was dead impressed, as he did the reversing manoeuvre first time – only pulled forward once (you’re allowed two forward shunts in the manoeuvre) and ended up dead straight in the bay at the end. I think the instructor was probably quite impressed as that too, I imagine it is unusual for someone to do that. Then again Steve has towed a fair bit in the past, and used to reverse his car trailer into his industrial unit a few years back when we had it. Altogether, I wasn’t surprised that he did it, and figured if he’d done that ok he’d probably pass the rest.

However, he failed on the driving. I am slightly relieved in some ways, as I did want a little bit of recognition for how much like hard work it had felt to me! Then again, most of the things he got minors on were more to do with not knowing what the examiner would be looking for, rather than major driving errors. A couple of the points Steve felt were fair and he will work on them; others he felt that they were simply a matter of the driving test having changed in the past 16 years and him not knowing some of those changes. Certainly I’m sure Steve could have passed with much less tuition than me, and I also think that Andy was probably being fairly strict, but he still got 17 minor and 5 major faults, which is too many! (I got 7, last week, if anyone was wondering … not that I’m competitive or anything )

Being particularly cynical for a minute, I imagine any towing instructor will probably want to prove the point of instruction being necessary before taking the test Having said that, we are all agreed that some lessons are fairly essential before taking the B&E test. If you’re confident perhaps you wouldn’t need as many hours as I did, but even Steve admitted today that if he had to do it for real he’d have a couple of lessons first.

Stupidly proud of myself for having passed, and guess what, now I *still* have less classes on my licence than most of you! Anyway, phew, and thanks so much for all the good lucks and congratulations. I was praying hard and just to prove there is a God, there was hardly any traffic on the roads Thanks again to Andy Taylor of Taylor Made Driving (link link link!), I couldn’t have done it without him!

Saw why the test only has a 20% pass rate this morning at the test centre though. This young chap was in to be tested at the same time as me and I watched him try the reversing thing, which is pretty much the first thing you do. He reversed, turned, then pulled forwards three times, and you’re only allowed to pull forwards twice in the whole thing. So he failed instantly.

Later on it turned out that my instructor had talked to him and found that his company had put him in for the test with little or no teaching, and he’d never reversed a trailer before in his life! Couldn’t believe that a company would waste the test fee like that; perhaps there are people out there who could just pass it (we’ll see if Steve manages) but given how hard I found it, thinking I was a decent enough driver in the first place, I’d be surprised.

So obviously the low pass rate is more because people enter it before they’re ready to do it, or because they take it without really knowing what it entails (chap today clearly didn’t know he could only pull forward twice as he really didn’t need to drive forward when he did).

Anyway. Now I’m looking forward to Steve’s turn, which hasn’t been arranged yet, but it won’t be too long to wait.

Have leapt back into normal mode here (having been in zombie ‘can’t think about anything else but towing’ mode for the past few days) and done lots of catching up on housework this afternoon, there is more to be done but it will have to wait until later or tomorrow.

I have spent far too much time in a car today. Going to blog backwards here … 3hr towing lesson this afternoon. Manically hoping that if I were that awful and doomed to fail, the instructor wouldn’t be letting me sit the test on Wednesday but I’m not really that sure. Still, apparently these photos are going to end up on his website (towing page apparently under reconstruction at the moment). And I can highly recommend Taylor Made Driving, although if, after Wednesday, I never have to sit next to Mr Taylor in a car again, I will be very happy!

Before that I was driving home from Birmingham, where I spent a happy night escaping from reality with one of my best and oldest friends, we saw Nanci Griffith in concert (loads of nostalgia there as we used to spend hours listening to her earlier stuff in our teenage angst years together), and chatted until the early hours in the basic but perfectly adequate Etap hotel. It was a great night, and we will have to do something similar again next year. Perhaps a whole weekend rather than just a fleeting night!

Going back even further then. Over the weekend we had Caitlin and Riona with us, their company was pleasant as always even if it did make things somewhat messier and noisier than average (but only a little ). On Friday night we watched Superman Returns, which Steve and I really enjoyed. Nods to the original films in all the right places!

We did not very much on Saturday other than a picnic lunch in the park; then in the evening went down to a campsite near Plymouth where our friends Stuart and Liz were camping. The children had a swim in the pool, we all had a delicious Cadac (still want one of those) meal, lots of chatting/playing, etc.

Sunday had a slow start; Anna went off to look after Robyn for the day – I hope Aunty Emma found it as useful as we did! Then in the afternoon I set off for Birmingham. On the way I had a sub-mission to pick up the 3/4 size cello that I bought on ebay last week, found the house easily enough, was very worried that it might not be a 3/4 size (it is though – only a couple of inches different to the 1/2 size). It sounds much much nicer than Anna’s 1/2 size one – it’s old and a bit battered but that has obviously added to the tone of the instrument. Now if she can just learn the newly spaced fingering she’ll be well away.

Back to today then, oh and some random home ed from Friday, too. When I got home I found Josiah had been doing lots of map stuff with Steve; discussing directions and making compasses, and drawing maps to find ‘treasure’ on ‘Downstairs Island’. He’d obviously had lots of fun doing it. Friday’s education was helping the plumber install a new tap in the kitchen, the old one had been dripping since February, and I finally got annoyed enough to do something about it!

There, up to date. Tomorrow has another towing lesson in it, the last before my test. I am incredibly stressed out by the whole thing, the injustice of it all still annoys me immensely. However, as an aside but on the same subject, Steve and I have a small bet on. He thinks that he can pass the towing test without any tuition, because he’s such a great (and humble ) driver. So we are paying the aforementioned Mr Taylor of Taylor Made Driving an extra hour or so, to give Steve a mock test. This will cost us approximately the same as a good night out on the town, but give us far more entertainment value which will last a long time to come, whatever the outcome! Watch this space for results of both in due course

Oh, and just for a laugh, here is Josiah’s giant Balance (Sainsbury’s own Special K) flake. It was as big as his ear, which was hilarious, apparently!

This is how I am going to spend a huge (and expensive!) number of hours over the next couple of weeks. My test is booked for the middle of the month. Apparently the towing test only has a 20% pass rate which is a little scary. Going to have to practice a lot as well as the lessons. The driving’s okay, it’s the reversing manoeuvre that’s a pain.

You probably can’t tell but it *is* me driving the RAV4. Steve thought to bring the camera to take a picture for the blog (aaah, sweet) and even more thoughtful, brought the camera along secretly so that I didn’t get worried about him taking a picture! Don’t know why he thought I would be worried – I’m not really nervous about it, just slightly cheesed off to have to be tested on it all when most people I know just got the class on their licence automatically! Ah well, there we go.