‘You Must Learn to Drive’

It wasn’t that he ever had anything against learning to drive.

It was just that he had never seen the need.

Besides, this was no longer the age of the automobile. The halcyon days of the sleek E-type or the charismatic veedub, they were gone. In fact, aside from the fashionable enclaves of West London where parked cars retained an undeniable sex appeal, the world was now awash with vehicles as mundane as the people who drove them.

There were the vulgar SUVs – all confidence, no charm – assuming, wrongly, that their mass alone would be enough turn a head, or raise an eyebrow.

There were the company cars – a race of artless abominations with their flaccid names, their meaningless three-letter accolades and their air fresheners.

There were the meek, safety-conscious family cars – replete with signs celebrating the existence of another soon-to-be-mollycoddled brat.

No, this was not a time for falling in love with cars.

Yet still his loved-ones insisted: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

They never looked beyond it.

Yet, if this was not the time for falling in love with cars, it was certainly not the time to being seduced by driving.

30 years ago it was another matter entirely. Get five pints down your neck, break the speed limit by as much as your motor would allow, tap the brakes at the wrong time, propel yourself inexorably towards some unflinching tree or another and make a run for it before the pigs could brethalyse you. Who wouldn’t want to pass a test that allowed you to do that? That was fun.

But not today. Driving today was, true to the character of the age, sterile, joyless and monitored. Snitching cameras watched your every move. Endless tailbacks on motorways halted any forward momentum while grass-verges denied you even a consoling view of the landscape. Strapped to a seat. Radio playing. Blood-pressure rising. Cancer conspiring in the spine.

Everything about it struck him as hellish.

Yet still the loved ones insisted: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

His protestations were on a different frequency, it seemed. Even if you never had the need to drive, it was something you must do. A licence is good to have. It is appropriate for a man to drive. That was the party line.

Year after year, he would make the same case. Year after year, the response was the same: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

Even when he confessed that his attention span and patience were probably ill-suited to controlling a one-and-a-half-tonne missile as it wound its way through built-up areas – even then! – they shook their heads and insisted: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

Well, there comes a point when one simply cannot ignore the petitioning of those one loves any longer.

So he learned to drive. He got his license. He bought a car.

But if he hadn’t?

Well.

It is safe to say the little girl would still be alive today.