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Seann Walsh is going nowhere, slowly

Only once have I attempted to drive a car. A friend and I were on a late-night drive. On a country road, he suggested that I drive (an old biscuit tin on wheels, now rusting in a scrapyard). Starting a car involves some negotiation between the ignition, clutch and accelerator. Any operation requiring three separate acts is daunting, but beginner’s luck took over and saw me through first time. Driving seemed easy.

But eventually, you have to change gear. I had a foot on a pedal, a hand on a wheel and two eyes on the road. With all this going on, there was no way I could commit another hand to touching a gear stick. My quota of simultaneous physical engagements had reached its natural limit.

So, this drive involved me steering and accelerating, and a friend in the back changing gear, providing a literal interpretation of the idea of a back seat driver. As we fumbled into third gear, I noticed that we were rolling, at a humble speed of 28mph, into a ditch. I stopped the car, having made the decision that it would be impossible to steer away from anything at such velocity.

“I noticed that we were rolling, at a humble speed of 28mph, into a ditch”

Trying to start the car again was like trying to wake me up: a groan and a cough, but no movement. I handed the wheel back to my friend, who started it first time and sped away from the scene of my feeble attempts.

That taught me that driving is hard. One of the rules I live by is that if something’s hard, that’s a good reason not to bother. But it’s not the only reason I don’t drive.
Owning a car is stressful stuff: petrol prices, insurance, driving’s incompatibility with drunkenness, traffic, parking.

Parking, in this city of ours is obscenely stressful. When you eventually get
a permit (for which you pay plenty), you realise that there are more cars than there are spaces, and by the time you find a place to park, you’re so far from where you live that you may as well get a cab home from your car.

A friend of mine lives in Merlin Close, Hove, where the absurdity is taken to new levels. It is a quiet suburban cul-de-sac with about ten houses, and they’ve put double yellow lines there, meaning that the residents whose houses don’t have drives have to park half a mile from their homes. It’s an inexplicable decision, one step in stupidity behind putting double yellow lines in people’s private garages.

With this and other stresses, the utility and freedom of the car are not enough to persuade me. For the time being, I’ll get the bus instead.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 9:32 am and is filed under Seann. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.