Opinion

Anita Robinson: Pandemic has caused me a severe case of motoring pandemonium

Lockdown isolation has put Anita off driving more than a mile a day to the local shop.
Lockdown isolation has put Anita off driving more than a mile a day to the local shop. Lockdown isolation has put Anita off driving more than a mile a day to the local shop.

I’m worried about the psychological effect prolonged pandemic solitude has had on me.

Incarceration for so long has imbued in me a profound disinclination to go anywhere. My friends are singing freedom like canaries released from a cage and driving all over the country on the slightest pretext. Like a jailbird apprehensive of liberty, I sit in the car on my once-daily parole to the local shop for milk and papers and ponder. There’s nothing to prevent my driving into town. Then the prospect of mad traffic and difficult parking kick in and I scuttle towards hassle-free home.

This is a tragic state of affairs for a professional shopper like me, to whom the serial delights of a shopping complex are nirvana. My mileometer registers just over a mile per day – which will be handy if I ever sell the car. ‘One over-cautious lady owner. Extremely low mileage’.

My first social engagement post lockdown saw me run the gauntlet of the rush hour. Halfway to my destination, I turned around, came home again and ordered a taxi. I’m the kind of tension-filled driver who, on a narrow street, grips the wheel with claws of steel and holds her shoulders in to prevent clashing wing-mirrors with an oncoming car. My manoeuvering skills (never great) are so rusty I need the length of two Lough Swilly buses to park neatly. As for reversing into a space – five attempts and a growing number of interested spectators don’t help. Also, I believe I’m the only sane, risk-averse person on the road – just the kind of driver you don’t want to be behind.

My experience with wheeled vehicles is not a glorious one. Rollerskates defeated me entirely. (I have the scars to prove it.) I mastered a scooter, which had the reassuring advantage of a spare foot on terra-firma, though a net bag full of ‘messages’ on the handlebars occasionally upset my equilibrium. Then, at fifteen, there was the bike. The adolescent spur to cycling proficiency was the prospect of happening (purely by chance) upon boys in the park, which was on the other side of town and also housed the library as a valid excuse. All went swimmingly until my front tyre lodged fast between two cobblestones and I fell from grace. After that it was running for buses in heels and a brief romance with a boy with a motorbike called Betsy.

Being a late developer in every department, I didn’t learn to drive until absolutely necessary, because Daughter Dear was starting school. The Loving Spouse, gentlest of men, valiantly offered some initial tuition. My utter ineptitude, lack of co-ordination of eyes, hands and feet, an incapacity to understand cause and effect' drove him doolally. On one occasion, he put me out of the car on a country road and drove away, leaving me weeping on the verge. Doing a savage handbrake turn, he roared back, opened the car window and hurled my handbag into the ditch.

Time to call Bertie, patron saint of hopeless learners. Rumour had it Bertie could get a horse through the driving test. Placid, patient and unjudgmental, he deserved a leather medal. Our car at the time, was an elderly and glaringly turquoise VW Beetle with a steering wheel the size of a satellite dish. Bertie was a man who spoke his mind. “This car’s like driving a pig,” he said, but he got me through the driving test first go. Only subsequently did I discover I’d given my test-examiner’s daughter first prize in a public-speaking competition some weeks earlier.

Then of course, I had to get a car of my very own. You’d think I might have been consulted. Hah! My one sanction was, “Anything but blue…” The Loving Spouse set off with Noel Who Knows About Cars and guess what they came back with? That was five cars ago - and I never ever got a choice.

I have strenuously resisted any knowledge of a vehicle’s innards. Gary fills the tank, looks after water, oil and tyres. Noel does electrics, repairs and MOT preparation. I just drive it. If you see a wee purple Fiesta tootling along at 29 mph – take to the hedges!