More diluvial drama

Yuck. I am currently parked in Grantown-on-Spey High Street and the rain is incessant. So far, it’s not quite as bad (here) as the flooding last month but it has been far worse over in Aberdeenshire, especially Stonehaven and Huntly. Elgin has not suffered as badly as before, but the Lossie and Findhorn rivers are alarmingly high, with the water charging and bucking like an angry serpent.
Over here, in Strathspey, the rain is only one of my concerns. Verity is taking her test (1st attempt) this afternoon and she is not going to have it easy. Her 3.27pm test time will coincide with children leaving school, with their heads down to hide from the rain. The roads are already busy with parked cars, but they will particularly busy at half three.
The rain will cause additional hazards. Not only will she have to be careful on the blind bends on the roads out of Grantown, but she will have to keep an eye out for pedestrians close to puddles. Failure to take appropriate action could easily result in a fail, as a pupil in England found to her cost last year in England. She drove through a puddle, splashing a pedestrian, thus incurring a serious fault (presumably for ‘Awareness/Planning’) and failing her test. She appealed in the courts, unsuccessfully.

My main concern though is the roadworks. Verity’s test has coincided with the week they chose to rip up the whole of the High Street. This should not be a problem normally; roadworks are an accepted pustule on the face of driving. In Grantown however, it is a mess. The temporary traffic lights control three flows of traffic through the town and they are poorly sequenced. Yesterday I was teaching Andy and we were approaching the temporary lights with one car, a Micra, in front of us. The lights changed to red and we were bemused to see the Micra carry on through the lights and park by the pavement (almost blocking the road). One of the roadworkers rushed over to her and explained that she could not stop there and would have to move on. By now, the lights for the opposite flow of traffic had turned green and traffic was making its way towards us. Rather than sit tight and wait for the traffic to squeeze by, the lady in the Micra decided to move off, heading straight for the oncoming traffic. Another roadworker dashed over to her, halted her and moved some cones so that she could temporarily get out of the way, thus avoiding an Alf Roberts-style catastrophe. By the time the whole mess had been cleared, our lights had turned to green and back to red again; presumably with cars behind having no idea why the BSM car was not moving when the lights were green. A few minutes later, we saw an elderly lady getting out of the Micra, having ‘parked’ it at an angle of at least fifteen degrees to the curb.

You may argue that if Verity is good enough to take her test, then she should be able to deal with such problems. You are quite right. If a pupil cannot deal with difficult situations in their test, what will they do when, after they have passed their test, they get a similar situation and they are alone in the car, without help?

Right. The time has come. I’m off to collect Verity.
Incredibly, the rain is getting heavier.