I was being talked to about cars a little bit today. It is surely a curse of being at the apex of evolution that other human beings assume talking about cars is something you want to do – or even understand. To be fair to the person concerned she had only just met me – but I did say “I can’t drive and I know nothing about cars” when she asked if I knew about the problems with <<insert name of a type of car….The Crab? A Grange Pedalo?>>.

I can, of course, look at a car and think it looks stylish – or not, whatever the case may be. But beyond that and it becomes alien to me . Asking me about how a kind of car handles (??) is like asking me about having a vagina: I’ve been in other people’s  but I’d by lying if knew much about what was going on with controlling one and I can’t really tell the difference between a good one and a bad one.

Perhaps it is time I gave it a go though, I think sometimes. And then think perhaps it isn’t time I learned how to drive. The latter feeling overpowering the vaguely weak sentiments of the former suggestion. Thus, I continue not learning to drive – well I remain a non-driver. I am not sure you can be ‘not learning to drive’ as I already know how to not drive. I suppose learning not to drive would probably involve some deletion of memory so maybe I have undergone some kind of deprogramming that I wouldn’t, by definition, remember. Who knew not driving was such a potentially complicated process?

There are definitely some things about driving that appeal to me:

• raising your hand to someone who lets you in at a junction
• driving with music on
• going somewhere other than where you are easily
• I think I would quite like just sitting in a car to avoid being around other people – perhaps contemplating unhappiness and driving off a cliff top.
• putting petrol in
• the whole moral dilemma around doing a hit and run
• wearing driving gloves.