Driving us mad

Having had experience of his older brothers and their friends suffering scrapes and near-misses out on our country lanes, where cars can come fast and wide around blind corners, we urged caution.

“You don’t have to learn to drive immediately. Why not wait until you’re 18? You’ll be just that little bit more mature and responsible,” I suggested. We told him we’d be happy to pay for lessons next year, but not when he’d just turned 17.

Roscoe was having none of it. He had sent off and paid for his provisional licence so it would arrive before his birthday and booked his first lessons that week. He’s saved up enough from his part-time job to pay for it all. But he’s no fool: “It’s an investment,” he said. “I’ll be claiming it all back from you on my 18th birthday, about £550 in total,” he advised us.

Before we knew it, he’d passed his theory and booked his driving test. What could we do?

A few of his friends, who turned 17 before him, passed their tests a few weeks after he started learning. And so, when he announced he was getting lifts with them, another battle broke out: “Roscoe, we don’t want you in a car with someone who’s just passed their test. They’ll be inexperienced and nervous and, apart from anything else, it’s not fair on them to have passengers like you distracting them.”

Roscoe, unsurprisingly, didn’t agree. His friends were mature and responsible, he argued. And he’s right. He also pointed out that I wasn’t the best driver in the world, and I had to agree he was right there, too. I did scrape against the side of a van while merging onto a dual carriageway a few years ago and it frightened the life out of me.

I also once bumped a friend’s brand new car when I was reversing out of her drive in heavy rain and the children were squabbling in the back. I still shiver at the memory. So Roscoe did have a point.

“But it’s not just about how your friend’s driving,” I told him. “It’s about being able to deal with and react to other lunatics on the road, and that all comes with experience. If others are in the car, playing music and chatting, it makes concentration difficult.”

One week later, his friend hit another car coming wide round a corner and wrote her vehicle off. From the photograph Roscoe showed me, she was lucky to walk away alive, with only cuts and bruises.

The other car was wide in the road, apparently, but she agreed she was travelling too fast to stop: “This is what I was telling you, Roscoe, about having to react to other people’s bad driving, even when you’re obeying all the rules of the road.

“She was lucky she wasn’t injured. But imagine if she had had a passenger, perhaps you, in the car with her, who hadn’t been so lucky. She would have had to live with the consequences, and that would be a terrible burden.”

Roscoe applied the sort of logic only a 17-year-old boy could: “Well, that means I’m never going out in the car with you again, because a young, inexperienced driver could come around the corner at any time.” Conveniently, he’d forgotten he’d said this next day, when he needed a lift.

His friend is out driving again in a replacement car. She needed to get behind the wheel as soon as possible in order to get her confidence back and gain more road experience. But then Roscoe announced he was getting a lift with her again: “I don’t really think that’s a good idea,” I told him.

But he applied his teenage boy logic again: “For goodness’ sake, Mum. After that accident, she’s going to be the safest she’ll ever be right now. Much safer than you.”

And so, the battle continues.

MY son Charlie’s boss came into work the other day with a haircut that was slightly shorter than usual. His children had cried when they saw it, he said. Unbeknown to him, his five-year-old daughter Isabella had been hoping he would grow it in the style of a character from Lord of the Rings: “Daddy, how do you expect to look like Gandalf now?” she bawled.