My sister came to visit me last week and came the long way round to avoid a road she dislikes. This is of great comfort to me, as it makes me think that my irrational driving fears must be genetic. I do remember someone commenting that my dad would drive miles out of his way to avoid turning right onto a main road, and I like to think that we are making him proud. I have long avoided driving on motorways wherever possible, but I am now not keen on dual carriageways or any of the new multi lane roads which have emerged on the outskirts of Northampton in recent years.
When I was a student in Crewe and then Preston, I used to have to get to drive up to my digs in my mum's car at the beginning of term, unload the car and then drive back, drop the car off and get the train back again. And the same in reverse at the end of the year. I didn't enjoy the drive, but I did it quite confidently. The only bit that used to really trouble me was the M6 North of Birmingham, where the road was quite windy and the lanes narrowed. Now it all troubles me, as a driver or passenger. I am now just an anxious road user. Mr C regularly says he doesn't know how he manages to drive to work each day without me in the passenger seat to alert him to red traffic lights and braking cars ahead. I wish I wasn't such a wuss in a car. I wish I had the bravery (or even the ignorance) that I had when I was much younger, and would think nothing of racing around on the back of a scooter driven by one lunatic or another. I thought I was invincible, and I want to get that feeling back again, I'm fed up of being so cautious.
I bought a Honda Express when I was 16, from a very old man who lived on Gladstone Road. He said he didn't feel safe going out on it anymore, and perhaps I should have taken more notice. I could walk faster! Before I was allowed to ride it, my mum made me enrol on a Silver Star Riders course, and I spent the next couple of Saturday mornings being instructed by a big butch biker who I fell a little in love with, until I found out 'his' name was Jill, and he was actually a woman. A very handsome woman, but a woman nonetheless!
I was still a member of the Choirboys scooter club, and once I had passed the Silver Star Rider Award, I would ride over to Wellingborough (about 12 miles away) to meet up with my friends. Other members from Northampton would generally ride together, but I had to leave much earlier than them because it took me an hour and a half to get there. One day, they caught up with me on a roundabout, just as I was doing my proper silver star rider arm signals, raising my hand in line with my ear, as if saluting, before lowering it until the arm was straight, at right angles to my body. Rather than overtake me and meeting me there as I hoped they would, they all rode along behind me in a long line, mirroring my excellent signalling technique, and laughing so much that they almost fell off their scooters. It would have served them right!
I was once a passenger in a car with a group of blokes who were trying to scare one of our friends whilst overtaking him on his scooter. The driver got a bit too close and did actually hit him, and I watched in horror through the back window as he rolled and bumped down the road before coming to a halt in the middle of Mill Lane. We stopped and went back for him, and one of the blokes pushed his bashed scooter back to his house, and he got a lift in the car. He was OK, a bit battered and shocked, but didn't bear grudges and it soon became another one of those stories that everyone laughed about. That was what did it for me though. I didn't get on another scooter for over thirty years. I realised, as he bounced down the middle of the road just how vulnerable scooterists and bikers are. I turned 17 very soon after and started driving lessons and felt so much safer in a car. But I was always so careful when overtaking bikes and scooters, partly due to my experiences, but also because my dad's voice was ringing in my ears -'when you overtake a cyclist, always leave enough room so if they fall off, you don't run over their head'.
I think the cautious driving gene came from my Dad. My mum was a speed merchant, and had grown up on motorbikes. My cousin Jonathon had a motorbike and rode it over the fields on the farm where he lived. He offered me a ride on it one day when I was about 17 or 18, and I said no thanks. My mum (then approaching 60) said 'I will', and cocked her leg over the back, and away she went, over the fields and far away. I wish I was more like her, in so many ways.
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