Speed Awareness Course
“I’m here for my wife, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m taking one for the team.”
A bald man was telling me this, across a table of five other strangers, at my Speed Awareness Course last Friday. I couldn’t help but think he might be best keeping this information to himself. He had a loud voice and the course leaders were well within earshot.
“What are you here for?” He asked me.
I felt like it was my first day in jail. Should I answer like they do in prison documentaries?
“They say I was doing 48 in a 40 zone.”
The bald man continued to tell me about how his wife had been wronged by “bastard money makers.” Apparently she hadn’t even been speeding and it was a “fucking joke.” This country was, in fact, a fucking joke, he told me. Why had he chosen to hone in on me? There were two people sat between us, sipping their coffees in peace.
After the inevitable struggle to set up an overhead projector, our course leader – a man in his fifties who looked alarmingly like Walter White from Breaking Bad – introduced himself. He was jolly enough. Jollier than the rest of the room at least. In what felt like a surreal after-school detention sat forty-or-so pissed off-looking people. I’ve never seen a more diverse group; van drivers, slick-haired businessmen, teenage girls and pensioners. I noticed that a man with tattoos and a beard on the adjacent table had sat scrolling through his phone and ignoring his classmates’ small talk before bursting into life when a blond woman in leggings arrived late and sat next to him.
“Alright love, you don’t look like the type to break the rules?”
Walter White introduced himself with a string of definitely-used-before jokes, before his smile faded.
“If anyone is here on behalf of someone else, that is a serious criminal offence which is punishable by a jail sentence.”
I glanced across at the bald man. He was looking at the floor.
“So, first activity,” she said. “In your groups, I want you to make a list of ten vulnerable road users.”
I volunteered to be the scribe – a sound tactic for this kind of thing. You can’t be accused of not participating but you don’t have to talk or think.
“Animals,” said a man in his seventies who was wearing a tie.
I wrote it down but wasn’t sure if it was correct. Is an animal a road user? He’d completely thrown me.
“Anyone else?”
Nobody spoke. I’d been banking on the bald man to take a lead but he’d gone quiet.
“Horses,” said the man in the tie.
“I think that probably comes under animals,” said a nurse.
Between us we slung a few ideas around and got to seven vulnerable road users before hitting a lull again.
“Dogs,” said the man in the tie.
“A dog definitely comes under animals,” said the nurse, scowling. I sensed she didn’t want to be here.
“Dog walkers, then,” the man in the tie said.
The next activity was a quiz. A very miserable quiz.
“Which road users were involved in the most amount of serious accidents last year? Car drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists or pedestrians? One minute to place them in order, starting with the most. Okay, off we go!” said the grinning course leader, as if he were hosting a pub quiz and asking us to order The Spice Girls in terms of solo chart success.
“I think car drivers will be first,” I said to my group.
“No chance, mate,” said the bald man. “Motorcyclists. 100%.”
The group overruled me and we went with his answer. I was annoyed. Why was everyone siding with the bald fraudster?
The answers were revealed and I was correct.
“Number one is car drivers,” Walter White said. “There were 10,000 serious car accidents in the UK last year.”
I can’t imagine any other context where you would be pleased to hear such information but pleased I was. I had to stop myself from a doing a celebratory fist clench.
“That can’t be right,” the bald man said, shaking his head.
I looked at my watch. The four-hour course was seven minutes old. The course leader looking like a TV character was already losing entertainment value. It was a long afternoon.
It wasn’t the best start to a weekend but at least my licence is clean again so there is no immediate threat of being back on the buses. This being a good thing was emphasized last Sunday when I spent the day on a Megabus and the man in front of me was watching porn on his I-phone. That’s unacceptable, isn’t it? Or do I need to get with the times and stop being prudish?
I don’t associate the cartoon Megabus driver with happy times. The guy is creepy, isn’t he? Who came up with him? On a Megabus to Nottingham a few years ago I had a bout of food poisoning. The toilet door was broken, as was the light, so I smashed around in the pitch black, coffin box cubicle, trying to simultaneously hold the door shut while avoiding being sick on my jeans.
That was not, surprisingly, my worst experience on a bus. That honour goes to a 44-hour journey from Buenos Ares to Rio De Janeiro in 2006. I’d taken some sleeping tablets and passed out on the back seat, using the vibrating window as a pillow. At the border crossing, I was out cold. Neither the driver, nor (perhaps more worryingly) my friends, noticed that I hadn’t got off so I nearly crossed the border illegally, while asleep. After the other passengers had been through customs and got back on, I was eventually spotted and the whole bus had to wait as I queued up, in a zombie-like state, to get my passport stamped by men carrying guns.
I need to be careful about telling travelling anecdotes in mere Monday Musings as such tales will also feature in my new book. I don’t want to use up all my best tokens. Speaking of my new book, it is now just-about finished (I’m aware I’ve been saying that for a while) so fingers crossed it will be out soon. Maybe.
I’m already thinking about writing a third book, another novel perhaps. I was contemplating what might make a good opening scene – a chance to introduce a random and eclectic bunch of characters right from the offset. Last Friday afternoon I may have found my inspiration.
