Want to go for a drive?

In England you could apply for your provisional driving license when you turned 17 and you could then proceed to take driving lessons with large plates clearly showing L(learner)in a bold font attached to the front and back of the car. This of course meant that your 17th birthday present was a given – driving lessons. I had the same driving instructor who had taught both my sisters and my brother and he was a typical English old school gentleman who was very correct and proper. I am embarrassed to say that I failed twice and always on the same procedure…..reversing round the corner. I was absolutely perfect just driving straight, my three point turn, my hill start, my emergency brake. It was just reversing where I was pathetic and in my first test I hit the kerb as I tried to reverse and in my second the examiner claimed I was too far away from the kerb. I used to come back in tears vowing never to re take my test. Before my third test my Jijajee used to take me to practice quite often and I was reasonably confident on the day and this showed in my driving and I passed!!! I was delighted!!!! Now my next mission was to get my father to buy me a car. I wasn’t even bothered what car I got, whether it was used,new,what make….I just wanted a car. Now my father played his cards very strategically here as he realised that if I had a car I would take Mummy to buy her groceries and so on and forth thus saving himself a lot of time and effort so he agreed without too much difficulty. I still remember the first car he got for me…it was a silver coloured Toyota Starlet and was my pride and joy. One condition when I got it was that I had to wash Daddy’s car and mine once a week and vacuum the insides as well. This was a small concession that I happily agreed to!

When I think back I never used to go gadding around in the car with friends or anything. I used to drive myself and my younger sister to and from school so that was far preferable than going on the bus. Also Mummy used to love going on jaunts on a Sunday with me. She would hear about new supermarkets which had opened where tins of tomatoes and other vague items were much cheaper than Tescos so we would go hunting for these shops….now remember there was no GPS at this time so you would just have some idea where the shop was and go searching. There was also one road going into Manchester City Centre in an area called Rusholme which had the famous “curry mile”. There were 2 shops that sold Indian groceries and fresh vegetables in this row called Ravi and one called Chunni and Mummy would spend ages hand picking the bhindi and mooli in these shops. There were also a number of Bangladeshi and Pakistani restaurants in this stretch and the two of us would go and enjoy our lunch there. We always had one yellow daal, one mixed vegetables and one chapati each. When I look back now it was disgusting oily food but at that time when it used to come garam garam we thought we were Queens!!

I worked in the microscopy department at the Shirley Institute which was a research centre and the office was only a 10 minute drive from home. I had an hour’s break at lunch time so I would leave at exactly 1pm and Mummy would have my lunch on the table at 1.15 and I would eat and leave at 1.45 and be back at work at 2pm. It would have been easier to just eat something in the office but Mummy used to look forward to me coming home and she would rack her brains as to what to make for me and it would make her so happy that I just came home. If she had to go out to a lunch or visit anyone she would tell me in advance so I would either just buy something in the canteen or take a sandwich with me in the morning. It worked out well and everyone was happy. 

When I got more confident in my driving I ventured a little further out and took Nina and my cousins to Blackpool for the day. Blackpool is about 50 miles from Manchester and it used to take us about an hour to an hour fifteen minutes to reach and there was the beach, a wonderful amusement park and an indoor kind of wet and wild swimming pool. We used to spend the whole day enjoying ourselves and the fact that I was the eldest and in charge made me feel very proud!

I even drove my mother to London on a number of occasions as we had very close family friends, Uncle and Aunty Singhania who we used to stay with and they  lived in Hendon which is just outside London so I would park my car at home and Aunty would drive us into town whenever we wanted to go. However on one trip we were on the motorway way and there were some road works so I had stopped behind a car and the car coming behind me swerved in the rain and rear ended me into the car in front. Luckily neither me or Mummy were injured but it was quite a shock and we had to wait for a tow truck to take us to a garage and it was quite a palaver so that put me off driving long distances for a while!

Parking the car always was and still is the bane of my driving existence. I am terrible at it and it is probably the reason I stopped driving. I remember when I used to take Mummy shopping we would be going round and round looking for a parking meter and she would find the smallest space possible and try to persuade me to park there. Her patent dialogue was ‘if I could drive I would have easily fit in there’….and mine was ‘ but you can’t so please stop giving free advice’!! Talk about backseat drivers… she was an expert. 

Then I came to India and driving reached a whole new level… more on that in my next blog!!!