Thought for today:
"My daughter Rebecca has recently taken up driving lessons and her mother is teaching her. More fool mum is what I say!
I love my children, but having attempted to teach my first wife and my brother Patrick (both of whom nearly ended my life before the age of thirty years), I would never attempt to teach a relative again. Indeed; even with the dual-control system of a driving instructor's car, I would quickly rename it 'duel-control' in the ongoing road battle it faced.
My brother Patrick had this irrating and highly dangerous practice of allowing the steering wheel to move round within his hands as he turned it. He would rigidly hold the wheel and as he turned it full circle to avoid an oncoming ten-ton truck, his hands would remain permanently crossed as though I'd placed him in a straight-jacket before asking him to drive my car.
And as to my first wife's driving, well that was simply impossible! She just couldn't steer and was dangerous every time a car came in the opposite direction. We were engaged at the time and in the space of one year's tuition, I threw away the 'L-Plates' over a wall three times. It's a great pity that I didn't pick up the warning signs until it was too late and threw her over also before she'd got me down the aisle.
After eighteen months practice on the roads, £300 driving-instructor fees and half a dozen bumps and car accidents, (forty years ago), she did what all the women of her day did who possessed shapely legs and a fulsome figure; she donned a mini skirt on the morning of her driving exmination and passed her driving test at the first attempt, while it took me three attempts in my bell-bottom trousers and gammy leg to pass. It would seem that the driving examiner ignored the cat she killed when reversing up onto the pavement in her seven-point turn as he obviously had his eyes elsewhere at the time. All I know is that when it came to driving ability, she would never pass the mustard if it came to maintaining a regular heart rhythm in the passenger seat.
Now being a pensioner and still at the wheel (note my avoidance of the term 'in charge of the wheel'), I pity the poor dog who drives around with her today!" William Forde: September 28th, 2014.
"My daughter Rebecca has recently taken up driving lessons and her mother is teaching her. More fool mum is what I say!
I love my children, but having attempted to teach my first wife and my brother Patrick (both of whom nearly ended my life before the age of thirty years), I would never attempt to teach a relative again. Indeed; even with the dual-control system of a driving instructor's car, I would quickly rename it 'duel-control' in the ongoing road battle it faced.
My brother Patrick had this irrating and highly dangerous practice of allowing the steering wheel to move round within his hands as he turned it. He would rigidly hold the wheel and as he turned it full circle to avoid an oncoming ten-ton truck, his hands would remain permanently crossed as though I'd placed him in a straight-jacket before asking him to drive my car.
And as to my first wife's driving, well that was simply impossible! She just couldn't steer and was dangerous every time a car came in the opposite direction. We were engaged at the time and in the space of one year's tuition, I threw away the 'L-Plates' over a wall three times. It's a great pity that I didn't pick up the warning signs until it was too late and threw her over also before she'd got me down the aisle.
After eighteen months practice on the roads, £300 driving-instructor fees and half a dozen bumps and car accidents, (forty years ago), she did what all the women of her day did who possessed shapely legs and a fulsome figure; she donned a mini skirt on the morning of her driving exmination and passed her driving test at the first attempt, while it took me three attempts in my bell-bottom trousers and gammy leg to pass. It would seem that the driving examiner ignored the cat she killed when reversing up onto the pavement in her seven-point turn as he obviously had his eyes elsewhere at the time. All I know is that when it came to driving ability, she would never pass the mustard if it came to maintaining a regular heart rhythm in the passenger seat.
Now being a pensioner and still at the wheel (note my avoidance of the term 'in charge of the wheel'), I pity the poor dog who drives around with her today!" William Forde: September 28th, 2014.
