My driving instructor texted me: ‘Things aren’t working out. I’ll transfer you back your money’

It was perhaps when my two-year-old nephew pointed to the gap between his and his sister’s car seat, that fits about 1.3 bum cheeks, and called it “Brigid’s seat” that I thought “I really need to learn to drive”.
Or maybe it was before this – when his sister, then aged three, asked with concern how I’d made it down to Papa’s house when her mammy and daddy hadn’t given me a lift. (I’d walked.)
Or was it even before this, when a trip to Cape Clear involved a bus, followed by a Luas, a train, another two buses, and then a boat?
If I had €1 for every time a friend or family member asked when I was going to learn to drive, I’d have enough money to pay a private chauffeur.
Not driving was a favourite topic of Isabel’s, as it generally among my friends and family. My niece just couldn’t understand why. That it was something you had to learn, and practise did not – understandably – make sense to her beautiful toddler brain. Driving was just something adults did.
Was her auntie an adult at all? And if she wasn’t, what was she?
What has become a rather worrying development, is that since turning four, Isabel no longer broaches the topic. Even she has accepted that encouraging (or shaming me into) driving, is a futile mission. (I still worry, however, for the day she discovers that, in Junior Infants, she is a more competent cyclist than me.)
It’s not that I haven’t tried. The bandage was pulled almost a decade ago with a round of lessons with a local driving instructor. Now, learning to drive is a notoriously tense task that has undoubtedly fractured many a solid relationship, but I’m not sure – statistically speaking – just how many learners have been ‘broken up’ with by their driving instructor with a text message stating:
“Things aren’t working out between us. Send me your bank details and I’ll transfer you back your money.”
The experience didn’t boost my confidence. But then, that was never what this driving instructor was aiming to do.
“Come back to me when you have a real problem,” he said, when I tried to explain how migraine was a challenge in learning to drive.
Beep beep. We were off to a charming start.
I have since undertaken lessons with two further instructors. Both have been kind and patient, but neither capable of performing the miracles required for someone of my driving ilk. And, admittedly, I don’t practise enough outside these lessons. Or at all, given I have no car to practise in.
It was last year, after turning 32, that I made a commitment to myself. By the time I turned 33 the following year, I would have a full licence (and a picturebook deal) in my pocket.
It never fails to amaze me how swiftly time flies.
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So, 33 came, and there was still a big L on the licence in my purse that has been employed about three times in the past 12 months, and each time only as proof of address.
But I was not going down without a fight. It was time to get creative.
My energy is limited. So, being a rather pragmatic person, I went about getting some wheels beneath me in a more colourful manner. I found myself a fellah who drives.
Work smarter, not harder, isn’t that what they say?
Not only does he drive, but he is a generous driver. One who is happy to give lifts and carry the burden of travel. That he looks nice doing it only comes secondary to the matter.
Towards the beginning of the relationship, I was gushing about his driving to a fitness instructor on Zoom.
“It’s great,” I explained, “for our dates he usually just picks me up and takes me to the sea or somewhere nice.”
To which she responded: “So is it the man you like or the freedom?”
The answer to which was obviously both. Admittedly, mainly the former, but as Flann O’Brien so wisely said: “People who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles driving cars over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle car as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them, and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles car”.
I couldn’t possibly – in good faith – distinguish the man from his car. Nor, in reality, would I want to.
It is said that when you enter a new relationship, you often lose a little freedom. But when the other person in that relationship has a car, you gain a little too.