This summer I taught a very bright young girl who attended an expensive private school. She was great company, very polite and the lessons were going well. One day she made a mistake (I can’t remember what) causing her to exclaim “OH F#@K!!”. Now, that’s a word that has lost its impact through ubiquity, but, coming from her mouth, it was a minor shock, so I told her I couldn’t possibly accept such language in my car - she was smart enough to realise that I was not being serious. The following week I was talking to her mum on the phone and she said that her daughter had ‘confessed’ her sin. “So much for all that education!” she laughed.
She was not the only one. It is far from rare to have pupils who seem quiet and polite, then something happens and triggers a torrent of expletives to erupt from their mouths. On the whole, they are very polite and often apologise afterwards. We then have a little chat and I explain that other drivers and pedestrians are not perfect and may make the odd mistake from time to time. And if it is their own mistake that has caused the outburst I reassure them that they are learning to drive and these mistakes will diminish. The best thing is to accept mistakes; accept that drivers will get far too close behind us, accept that pedestrians will step out in front of them, accept that buses will pull out THEN indicate, accept that cars will pull out dangerously in front of us for fear of being stuck behind a learner driver, and accept that, for the rest of their driving life, they will make mistakes. Once they realise that, the actions of others are easier to anticipate and driving becomes a lot less stressful.
“HYPOCRITE!” you may think, if you have read my previous post. Fair enough, I never said I was perfect.
Actually, it was my previous post that caused me to write this. A few days ago a lady called me and asked if I would teach her daughter to drive. After discussing the basic details she asked if it was possible to pay by card. Well, until a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t. Cash, cheques, gold, bed & breakfast, malt whisky, even buckets of mushrooms I would accept, but plastic I couldn’t. However, now I have a website with the facility to buy lessons online I was happy to tell her that she could go to www.farledrivingschool.co.uk and pay for her daughter’s lessons by card. The next day I received an email informing me that she had bought a block of lessons for her daughter. I then went to the statistical website that analyses who is looking at my own website (and this blog). Amongst the information it provides is which website they were previously looking at (such as which search engine) and which website they went to next. From this I saw that this lady, this customer, had read my last post where I made it clear what I thought of the chap who led me to think he was going one way, then went the other. Oops! She has entrusted me to teach her daughter how to drive and how to react to other drivers and then she reads that.
So perhaps I should be a bit more careful, a bit more professional about what I write here. After all, I have provided a link from my ‘professional’ website to this blog, so I have to expect that pupils and customers may sometimes read these pages.
I hope you understand. Driving tuition is my business and I must be professional. So, if that means this blog is more sanitised, more bland, then that’s the way it has to be.
Right, I’m off now to see how many goals my mighty Liverpool have put past little Blackpool.
OH, FOR F#@K’S SAKE!!!
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