Living in the countryside it is useful to be able to
drive; especially as our village had a
pub, a garage and a village shop which sold little that was in anyway edible. Dad decides to teach Mum to drive. Sister and I sit in
the back seat of the car and listen to much arguing (actually I don't think Mum said much - think the terror of being behind the wheel gave her lock-jaw). In my mind learning to drive always
involves dire threats - so during my ill-fated attempts I wasn't surprised when my normally mild-mannered boyfriend took on the attributes of Grendel's mother (no - he did not resemble Angelina Jolie - very bad representation of G's Mum IMHO). Anyway, Dad despairs that Mum will ever pass her test and Mum despairs of being in that circle of hell which has her taking driving lessons with Dad for eternity - she almost gives up.
Late one night Mum wakes me up and says Dad has to go to hospital as he has had an accident. Dad was mooching around in the garage and managed to step on a nail with a large piece of wood attached (note - in our family cars were rarely kept in the garage - it was useful store for guinea pigs accoutrements, gardening tools and assorted dangerous bits of lumber). Unfortunately the nail and plank were now attached to his foot - he is a squeamish man and couldn't face separating them and so couldn't drive himself to hospital which is about eight miles away.
Although sleepy I was quite excited about the thought of an ambulance appearing outside our house (yup- life in the countryside provided plenty of thrills). Mum said that they certainly wouldn't be ringing for an ambulance - they didn't pay their taxes for people to waste NHS resources.
I was alarmed to hear her say, 'Don't worry about Dad, I'm going to drive him there.'
This was, in fact, extremely worrying: firstly Mum couldn't see in the dark (I mean this literally - she has an eye condition that makes it hard to see in the dark - even half-light), she had never driven in the dark before (true darkness - no streetlights) and Dad was pretty irascible at the best of times - how would his speared foot help?
They managed to get to hospital and when asked what the drive was like Mum said that Dad groaned and swore quite a lot, but she assumed that was the pain in his foot.
Although sleepy I was quite excited about the thought of an ambulance appearing outside our house (yup- life in the countryside provided plenty of thrills). Mum said that they certainly wouldn't be ringing for an ambulance - they didn't pay their taxes for people to waste NHS resources.
I was alarmed to hear her say, 'Don't worry about Dad, I'm going to drive him there.' This was, in fact, extremely worrying: firstly Mum couldn't see in the dark (I mean this literally - she has an eye condition that makes it hard to see in the dark - even half-light), she had never driven in the dark before (true darkness - no streetlights) and Dad was pretty irascible at the best of times - how would his speared foot help?
They managed to get to hospital and when asked what the drive was like Mum said that Dad groaned and swore quite a lot, but she assumed that was the pain in his foot.
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