Car-nage MK II

EXAMINER and VIKI take their seats in the car. EXAMINER looks on as VIKI engages in brief but lively struggle with recalcitrant seatbelt.

EXAMINER: Ok, during the test, please continue straight ahead unless I ask you to do otherwise. When you're ready, please start the car and move off.

VIKI turns key in ignition. Various lights on the dasboard come on. VIKI turns key again, vigorously, and car whinnies into life. VIKI wrestles with gear stick, remembers clutch pedal, then stalls car.

VIKI: Ah. Third gear.

EXAMINER gazes straight ahead. VIKI selects correct gear, pulls out, indicates and then releases handbrake. EXAMINER makes rapid succession of jottings on clipboard.

EXAMINER: At the crossroads, please turn right.

VIKI indicates left, stalls at junction, and eventually proceeds straight ahead.

EXAMINER fishes extra biros from pockets and jots with renewed vigour.

EXAMINER: Please pull up on the left when it's safe and convenient to do so.

VIKI, with a squeal of brakes, pulls up slightly to the left of the central road markings, exactly opposite somebody's driveway.

EXAMINER (still jotting): Please move on when you're ready.

VIKI selects gear and applies foot to brake pedal. Car stalls.

VIKI: Oh dear. (in tones of desperate jocularity) Can I start this test again?

EXAMINER (with the fixed smile of someone trying to placate a lunatic): Just take a deep breath and think about what you're doing.

VIKI complies, and moves off. A PEDESTRIAN is crossing the road ahead. PEDESTRIAN sees car approach, and begins to dawdle, grinning evilly.

VIKI contemplates slowing down, but right foot disagrees. VIKI speeds up. PEDESTRIAN's grin switches to expression of abject terror.

EXAMINER applies her full weight to dual controls; car screeches to a halt.

EXAMINER abandons jotting in favour of telling a rosary.

VIKI eventually bunnyhops to a halt outside test centre.

VIKI: That didn't go too well.

EXAMINER (relinquishing white-knuckle grip on dashboard): Miss Lane, I'm sorry to say you haven't passed the driving test on this occasion. Would you like me to explain why?

VIKI: Do you have time before your next test?

EXAMINER laughs thinly, and warms to task of enumerating VIKI's errors. Some time later, EXAMINER disembarks, meets VIKI's instructor crossing road, wrestles him to the ground and garrotes him with her hi-vis vest.

Dinnertime doggerel

We’ve made it through the East Lancs. jam,
the decent telly starts at eight,
so I put on a bright cheery voice:
‘what do you want to eat?’
You think, and shrug, and roll your eyes,
and ask me what I want;
as if my dish were your command.
‘I don’t mind,’ I say, and wait.
‘Whatever,’ you concede at length;
I take you at your word.
I offer Thai curry, good and green,
but you reckon curry’s weird.
‘Pasta?’ I counter. ‘A nice pesto sauce?’
You can’t object to that.
But then you do: with a ‘yak’ face you remind me
that pasta has no taste.
A fry up, then? Sausies burst the way
you like, eggs yolks nice and runny?
But my last fried feast, you remind me,
led to an evening crunching Rennies.

Now eight-thirty, beneath golden arches,
you ingest your cow derivative and cheese,
fix me with an aggrieved gaze and ask
‘Why’s it always me who has to chose?’

End-of-course haiku

Smell of fresh cut grass
as I float on sofa-cloud
with no work to do

Return of the Hat...

I'M BACK!!!!

*Dusts cobwebs off blog*
Well, that was a fun eight-or-so months. If, that is, your idea of fun is being clobbered mercilessly about the head with Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. Quite frankly, I can think of nicer ways to spend my time. But never mind - the course is over, the final (and unspeakably evil) essay is written and awaits posting. Let it not concern us now that said essay is a steaming pile of the smelly stuff - the time to worry about that is August, when the results come out. I expect my results letter will have all the possible grades scored out with an angry red biro, and will instead bear the legend: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? THIS IS UNIVERSITY LEVEL STUDY, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!
But never mind. It's the journey that counts, not the destination - right?