For the most part, I love my job as a driving instructor, but some times I could see it far enough, especially in the winter when it’s cold, dark, the weather’s miserable and everyone seems to get in the car with some sort of ailment, sneezing, coughing and spluttering over my car, kindly sharing all their germs with me.

One thing I have learned during my time in this particular career, is that communication is vital. If you and your learner are hurtling along at a great rate of knots towards a potential hazard, your communication skills and prompt and precise delivery of an instruction need to be top notch in order to avoid any potential nerve shattering moments.

I have learned very quickly to choose my words and terminology carefully. If for example, I say ‘stay right over to the left’ or ‘slow down quicker’ it can evoke an interesting reaction from my learner. Experience taught me very quickly, that when instructing my learner to brake, to put the descriptive word first. If I instructed my learner to ‘brake gently’ all they would hear would be ‘brake’ and the ‘gently’ aspect of the instruction was completely lost on them as my whiplash came along nicely. Therefore I learned very quickly to say ‘gently brake’ or ‘slowly brake’. Communication is the key in so many aspects of life but never more so, than with driving tuition.

This week I learned there can be a flip side to the issue of communication that can sometimes provide much amusement. I was passed the details of a young boy who’d just turned 17 and wanted to learn to drive. It turns out he lived with his grandma and when I called and asked for him, his grandmother answered. ‘Is Daniel there’ I enquired, ‘Hang on’ came the reply ‘He’s outside with his birds’…Blimey! I thought – how many women can a young lad of 17 have? On further investigation, it turned out he bred budgies and I laughed at how easily words can be misinterpreted from all angles! Imagining this young boy outside with his personal Hareem, provided one of the more amusing moments in my current career.

Young Holly’s been doing well this week with her diet and exercise which is more than I can say for my good self. I met a friend for tea last night. We’re planning to go to the gym together and give each other moral support and decided to have one last blow out meal ( sad thing is, we’ve been doing this for the last four weeks as we discuss which gym to join! ). The pair of us seem to have this insatiable appetite for curly fries and onion rings, so after suitably confusing the waitress with our vegetarian and vegan requirements for our sizzling fajitas, we ordered our side portions of onion rings and curly fries (if Tarzan knew about our decadence, he would most certainly be planning a torturous routine for my next gym session). Anyway, the waitress eventually arrived with all our dishes declaring ‘the tables too small’ at which point we had to acknowledge that we may well have been a tad greedy. I know, I should be thoroughly ashamed of myself, especially since I’d left my poor sweet portly Holly at home with her boring dry dog food and a bowl of tap water. I hang my head in shame and apologise on record, to the obesely challenged canine community.

She’s certainly moving a bit quicker these days. Only yesterday she suddenly saw a cat and darted wildly off in hot persuit, only to sit down in the middle of the road deciding she’d exerted herself quite enough for one day, but the initial effort was pretty impressive I must say.

So, now my docile lumbering dog can move quicker than me. I must pass on the curly fries next time!