I was out driving the other day, and someone overtook me in a lovely Porsche 911 Carrera S.  I looked across as it glided past, and at the driver at the wheel, and thought “what have you done to deserve that car?”  Not in a judgemental way, mind you, but it got me thinking.

In many car racing computer games your entitlement to drive particular classes of car has to be earned through proving your driving skill, rather than just the accumulation of money.  It strikes me that actually this is a fair and sensible approach, and one that highlights just how inadequate and antiquated our current system is.  At the moment we only have one driving test, which is a simple yes/no answer to the question “did this person meet the minimum requirements on the day of the test”.  The same driving test entitles someone to drive a rusty old Vauxhall Corsa, or a Bugatti Veyron.  There’s something wrong there, methinks.

And so, as I drove along in my Ford Escort, I worked out the finer details of my idea to revolutionise driving tests, licences and car manufacture.  To my surprise and delight, it looks like it might actually be a good idea!

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Mother Teresa once said “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”  I like that image, that the whole ocean in all its vastness is still essentially composed of drops.

I’m also reminded of a line or two in a song from the musical Into The Woods which says “Oh, if life were made of moments, even now and then a bad one! But if life were only moments, then you’d never know you had one.”  I like that too.

And with those two notions at the forefront of my mind, I thought it would be good to write a quick summary of how Samuel has progressed since his birth, charting some of the highlights and milestones of the past 12 weeks.  I guess this is for posterity.  Or reference.  Or guidance.  Or amusement.  Or indeed just to pass the time.

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This post could also easily have been entitled “Why I’ve had nursery rhymes going round and round in my head for the last few days”.  But that’s a bit of a long title.  And it has nothing to do with television.

At the weekend we found ourselves in Paignton, staying overnight with my parents.  It’s not the house I grew up in, but it’s a home from home I’ve learned to love.  ‘Home’, for me, will always be Watcombe Park, in that cosy little 3 bedroom house with the back garden that flooded when it rained and the front garden with the rose bush at the end of the path (but that’s another story).  A great many happy memories were generated in that house, from my earliest childhood memories through to leaving home for university.  And now, nearly 25 years on, with a youngun growing fast, I’m conscious that everything we do has an impact in some way, even if he is only 11 weeks old.  Memories are being made, and as a father I have a duty to ensure that they are good memories.

And so, on this somewhat spontaneous visit, I decided it would be a good opportunity to reclaim a few cassette tapes from my youth, to give Samuel something to listen to.  Or, as the case may be, for me to sing along to until such a time as he can join in.

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I like to think of myself as a Driver.  Not just someone who happens to drive, mind you, an actual Driver.  With a capital D.  I see a car not as an object or a tool to be controlled, but as an extension of my own body.  The wheels are my limbs, gripping to the road and telling me all about the road surface.  The engine is a muscle, delivering power when and how I determine, and which needs rest and exercise to operate properly.  And the driver’s seat, the steering wheel, the pedals, the gear stick, are all part of my central nervous system, delivering the impulses from my brain to the respective parts of the extended body.  Driving, for me, is not about getting from A to B – it’s about living life in an augmented reality.

And the A303 is a fantastic road to experience that reality.  I’ve been driving on it a lot recently, and each journey has built upon the last my love and appreciation for what, for many, is just a road.  You see, the A303 isn’t like a motorway.  It’s slower, certainly, but it’s more scenic, more interesting to drive, and requires more skill to navigate effectively.  Now, I’m not saying that you have to be a qualified driver to make it all the way down the road, it’s not exactly precarious, but being a Driver means I can appreciate and embrace all the twists and turns, the adverse cambers, the ever-changing gradients, the varying speed limits, the wavering lane widths, the unpredictable surface quality.  For someone trying to get from A to B, the A303 is an inefficient pain in the neck that urgently needs resurfacing and making dual-carriageway the entire length of it.  And that’s why I love it so.

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