The American car god has at last caught up with me...in England!

We all know how I HATE photos of myself: I'm supposed to be on the other end of cameras. But this is the least I could do for my instructor, Andy. (Used by permission of Five Day.)

Whew!

Briefly, after an incredibly agony-filled two months, I took the UK Driving Practical Test on Saturday in Norwich, and passed.

Correction: I did not simply pass, I passed with a miniscule 2 minor errors. One is allowed 15 of those and can still be awarded a license.

How can this be, considering that less than four weeks earlier, in Cornwall, I had failed?

Correction: I had not only failed, I had failed miserably. Although the examiner could manage to find only 10 minor faults, he rearranged reality and made them into THREE, count 'em, THREE SERIOUS DRIVING FAULTS. During the debrief, he also delivered a little lecture about how endangered he had felt when my directional signal flipped off of its own accord on a curve up a hill to an intersection and I chose to shift first and reapply the signal second in order not to stall on the FREAKING MOUNTAIN because I had an Audi on my tail! My Cornwall instructor (one must have one of those to learn those hinky backing-around-corner things and to rent a test-worthy car) was aghast when he heard the examiner deliver the "fail" verdict. I was aghast, and as angry as I've ever been.

No points on my license
In 46 years of driving, I have had NO POINTS on my license. None. In any state. You're welcome to check. No accidents, except for a deer hitting me, and a woman bashing my bumper when I was stopped at a light. Total lifetime auto damage? Under $2000, all in.

So...that gormless examiner in Cornwall drove me to several things. To wit:
1. I joined the Association of British Drivers so I can put my two cents in.
2. I decided to retake the test at a more sophisticated venue where the examiners might possibly have seen aliens before, and had become unafraid of us.
3. I decided on an intensive course with test at the end, far from home for two reasons: no demands by husband, dog and cat, and I wanted some time in a city.

I found Five-Day online, chatted online, phoned and talked with a live human, and booked a week's tuition in Norwich.

Five Day intensive driving course deals with a riled Yank
As it turned out, I was still so emotionally scarred from the Cornwall experience, I wanted Simon to turn around and fetch me home after he left on the Monday morning of the course after driving me there on Sunday. I managed to persevere, but went to the first session in a rare foul mood. (Not that my foul moods are rare; it was rare in its intensity.) Each day was one hour of classroom work followed by four hours of driving.

The classroom teacher was ex-military, and he--Bob--gave as good as he got. And brother, he got some shite from me that first day. To his immense credit, by the end of the week, we were having fun sparring with each other, and giving each other favorite quotes and so on.

The part on the road was wonderful, too. The driving instructor, Andy, is possibly one of the nicest, wisest, most knowledgeable people I have ever met.  He, too, got a dose of my wrath that first day. But we went for a drive, and after an hour, he asked why I was there, said I drove just fine, and should just tell the office to book my test so we'd get it booked by week's end. (The company has a full-time person who trolls for cancellations so they can book tests WAY faster than the timing the DSA--Driving Standards Agency--offers.) I told him about Cornwall, and I told him I really did need to learn how to back around a corner, because of being a Yank and therefore not having the DNA to permit it. (There are four maneuvers an examiner can choose from to test applicants: backing around a corner, parallel parking, backing into a parking bay and a three-point turn.)

To make a long story short, Andy and I had a great week driving and became friends out of it all. When Simon showed up to get me on the Friday--they could get no closer than Tuesday for a test booking, so I decided to go home for a week and take a Saturday, June 18 slot, instead--he chatted with Andy. We all decided that it's a shame we are six hours away...but sometime, Andy and his wife and Simon and I will get together for some dinner and a laugh, we have all agreed.

But the test. Ah, the test. Andy said at least a few times every single day, "If you drive like that, you should have no problem passing."

Professionalism at the DSA, Norwich
On the appointed morning, my nerves were shot--as they had been since the horror of that first test. At the test center, Andy was positively shrink-like in his efforts to chill me out, showing me photos of another instructor's new puppy since he knows I love dogs, assuring me that either examiner I got, Michael or Harry, would be a decent human being--a nice guy, in fact, who just wanted to see if one could drive safely and not whether one would wither under jackbooted and illegal commands, a la Cornwall.

That would be a change.

Harry was a great guy. Not only was he great, but he was charming. We had a nice drive, interspersed with conversation about cars, England, his job, my job. At the end of it, when he delivered those lovely words, "I'm pleased to tell you that you have passed your practical driving test," I was so delighted that I told him he was a lovely man, which Andy--approaching the car for the debrief--overheard, and laughed about. Then Harry thanked me for an enjoyable, confident drive. Amazing!  And then Andy took my picture for the company website--I submitted, with better grace than I had shown a couple of weeks earlier when the mental, physical and spiritual erasure of the Cornwall experience began--and it appears currently on the second page of student photos. (Look by date and name; I passed the test on June 18, written 18/06/11 in British usage. You can "like" the photo if you want.)

How, one wonders, could this experience have been so different from Cornwall? In the interim, I had not driven at all, except for the days with Andy. Basically, after the backing stuff was through my skull, that was just getting the lay of the land. Norwich is a real city, lots of traffic, cross-hatched boxes, every kind of pedestrian crossing, narrow roads, country roads on the outskirts, motorways...everything. Cornwall? Not so much. Simple, by contrast.

When bureaucracy goes rogue
I finally realized, driving back home yesterday after a lovely weekend in Norwich (great shopping, and the cathedral is magnificent), that I had been verbally abused in Cornwall. I recall every instant of that examiner's remarks to me. I recall his fumbling around about the parallel park, asking me whether there was a person sitting in the target car and deciding for me that I didn't want an audience. Why not? Did he think I could possibly have parked for the previous 46 years with never a soul on the street to watch? In NYC? I recall him telling me to go straight when it was actually a left turn and all the left-turn things needed to be done, and I did them. I recall his snorts, and his lousy directions that sounded as if he wanted me to go into a car park when he really wanted me to go downtown, and his following up my ALMOST taking a wrong turn with, "Did you think I wanted to go shopping? My wife drags me shopping enough." And those were the good parts. I recall that he said nothing about my perfect emergency stop, not at his bidding as can be required at a test at examiner's discretion, but because a motorcycle shot out from between two stone walls into the roadway. I made a textbook emergency stop, and a textbook departure when the incident was at an end.

My conclusion is that the Cornwall examiner was a gormless creep, at best, and possibly too incompetent to be judging the competence of others.

Harry? A total professional, competent, looking for what one wants on the roads: safe driving, good decisions, control of the automobile according to DSA standards, knowledge of British roadways...all that sort of thing. The same things any good driving examiner on earth would be looking for, not the ability of  already tense applicants--especially foreigners--to endure waffling, imprecision, illegal requests and derision, which is what the Cornwall examiner delivered.

So...is the car a god in England? Yes, much as it is in America. There are a few false prophets around who have tarnished that god well and truly, and have meaninglessly made experienced American drivers into shuddering hulks. You doubt it? Just read the stories by Americans on the internet about their UK driving tests.

But there are also true priests serving the god of the internal combustion engine, and I am thankful I found several in Norwich.

Thanks to Andy, thanks to Bob, thanks to Peter and the rest of the Five Day staff ..and thanks to the DSA's  Harry, too. I'm proud have met all of you, and not to have been judged lacking.