Month: March 2009

It was the reverse! I failed on the first exercise, before I’d even got out of the gate of the test centre. I said I wasn’t getting it, and I bloody well wasn’t. To rub salt in the wounds the examiner and my instructor both said I had it lined up perfectly to go in the first time, but to me it looked all to bollocks so I took a shunt (which is to drive forwards try reversing again). I ended up needing three shunts, you are only allowed two. Fail. Apparently I also stopped short of the bay, but you are allowed to get out and check (if you haven’t already failed and can’t be arsed), and I dinged a no entry sign with the back of my trailer on the way out for good measure, but it was on the blind side and couldn’t be seen from the cab so I didn’t notice and neither did the examiner. HAH! Score one for the Buck. Then I did an hours drive around an unknown course, with some hideously tight corners that took all my skill and every inch of the road to avoid crashing, and would have passed on that part. I got eleven minor driver faults. You can get fifteen and still pass. That might sound skin of the teeth, but I didn’t make one serious mistake. Not forgetting that on my fourth attempt at a rigid, after forty four hours driving, I passed with fifteen driver errors! That was skin of the teeth! The minors are just little things, one he got me on was when he told me to pull in on the left. I checked my mirrors, indicated when I knew I was safe to do so, then pulled in. I got a minor for not leaving a few seconds between indicating and moving in to the side. I’d checked it, it was safe, but it didn’t give Dolly daydreamer time to wake up and notice the signal. So minors are inevitable. There’s always room for improvement. When you are juggling the amount of information you have to be constantly processing, slight errors will creep in. If I could have nailed that bloody reverse I would be waving a class one license about now. Damn and blast. To remain positive; I now know that if I can suss the reverse manoeuvre I can pass on the road. That, at least, is a huge weight off my mind. Also, I tackled some hideous corners, sight unseen, on my own interpretation of them. This is what I need to pass an employers assessment drive. I more or less know the usual route my works take you on for an assessment. All the bits of it that filled me with stark dread a week ago I now know I can negotiate. I’m taking another four hours on the 31st of March, hammer the reverse and refresh myself on the road, then retaking my test on the 1st. So, […]

Here we go again. Test day tomorrow, bricking it! I was out again today, and I didn’t do too bad. He took me around the worst test course that the test centre has (one so bad he reckons I’m only likely to be taken on it if I get a visiting examiner who is only familiar with that route. He reckons the regular examiners are scared to take an artic with full forty four foot trailer around it!) he talked me around it more than I would have liked ( I’m not sure if that is how it would have gone if I’d have been left to my own interpretation of the situation) but I managed even the tightest corners. Now the test is whether I can interpret a corner as I’m approaching it, get it all slowed to the appropriate speed, appropriate gear, take both lanes if I need to, and take the right line through the corner first time every time, without input from an instructor. Obviously if I can’t I don’t deserve to have the license, but you don’t want your test to be the first time you’ve tried! Also I’m still struggling with my reverse manoeuvre. I couldn’t emulate that brilliant bit of driving from yesterday. It must have been pure luck. Bugger. However, on the penultimate attempt today, he stopped me and explained that I should always be aiming to bring it in using my right hand side. That way you can actually look out of the cab and see where you are going, and you don’t block your vision with your own trailer. Don’t ask me why, it made sense when he was telling me. Anyway, when I tried it like that on my last attempt, I managed to get the damn thing in the bay. All the technical bits I can piss though. Uphill /downhill start, picking a safe place to pull over to stop, angled start around stationary vehicles, etc. So it’s my reverse and interpreting the road correctly tomorrow. Deep breath, don’t panic, just drive. On the bright side, today whilst I was out I refrained from killing a mother with pram. I was tootling along in an apparently hard to spot sixty foot wagon, with only six or seven L plates and three foot high lettering proclaiming it to be a training vehicle, when some dickhead taxi driver overtakes me on the dual carriageway, then pulls straight across my front into a side street. The side street  was right in front of the wagon so he had no time to asses the situation, just cut me up and dive for the street. Unfortunately there was a pedestrian already crossing, pushing a pram/ chair thingy. He had to slam on, there was nowhere for me to go so I just had to stand on the brakes, and happily stopped before I hit him. Having sixteen tyres on the road, air brakes, and no load make for nippy braking. I didn’t really […]

Spoke too soon. All going swimmingly, quietly competent, HAH! I’ve changed my mind. I’m taking to it like a duck to ballet. I thought I was doing alright, not killed anyone, not too nervous, seemed like all was spiffy, just one lesson and all. Turns out I was in the ‘unconsciously incompetent’ phase; where I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. I was wondering how I was supposed to judge the tighter corners when as you turn into them, the trailer blocks your view in one mirror, and the other is pointing at nothing in particular. Wasn’t overly concerned as I seemed to be doing it anyway. Then we came to an island today. Obviously you are all aquiver with the amount of things you are trying to do at once in that situation. You have to line the truck up, bring your speed down, select the appropriate gear, try to keep moving, then leap into any gap in the traffic with all sixty foot of wagon. I was doing all of the above, spotted a gap and went for it. The instructor said "you’re too tight on the left." I looked in my mirror and sure enough I had started steering too soon and my trailer was heading for the pavement and there were railings on the edge. I acted instinctively, which is to steer the front end in, around the corner. This would have put the arse end out and clear in a car or rigid truck. Not so in an artic. I smacked the trailer straight into the railings and dragged along them! Bollocks! We had to stop and check that I’d not made the trailer un-roadworthy (it was just a tad scuffed). If that had have been a car or a pedestrian, well, there probably wouldn’t have been a lot down for them. So then I started to understand what he meant about steering out until your rear axle is clear, then start steering in, keeping an eye on the wide angle mirrors, and chase the cab along the line of the pavement. So I’ve made the leap to ‘consciously incompetent’, I now know how much I don’t know. At this rate I’m on schedule. The next level is ‘consciously competent’ where I have to think about every action but then get it right, crack that tomorrow, then I just have ‘unconsciously competent’ where I instinctively do the right thing. Polish that on Thursday, then walk my test on Friday! Easy when you think about it. Those who don’t want to know the result of Friday’s test, bury your head in your hands now. After yesterday going so well (apart from the reverse, which is a nightmare) I really thought I was going to sail through this, maybe even pass first time. Now I’m back to my default position; that I just keep trying until I do pass. Big come down. We’ll see how tomorrow goes. If I’ve taken on board the things I was […]

Well, after all the excitement of the wedding I’m back to the day to day stuff. I went out for my first lesson in an artic yesterday. I did that one drive up and down a straight road before, but yesterday was the biggy. Forty four foot trailer, dirty great DAF unit. Bloody huge. He told me to drive it up the big straight road I went to on my assessment, not a problem, do a U-turn at the top, fine and dandy, drive back, easy peasy, take the next left onto the main road, DO WHAT? And that was my warm up done. One tootle up and down a quiet road, then out into the real world in the best part of sixty foot of truck! Stunningly, it wasn’t so bad. A lot better than my first two tests in a rigid. That was thirty two hours of driving and I was still rigid with fear. From the offset (he says, deliberately refraining from using that hideous Americanism ‘ from the get-go’. Damn their pervasive media and bastardisation of our language. "This is the language of Shakespear, keats, the bible" to loosely quote Higgins from "My fair lady" -though not, as I recall from the book Pygmalion.) Meanwhile, back at the Buck-cave, I was talking about my driving. From the offset…, I was quietly competent. As the instructor said, "now you know you could steal an artic. You might clip a few pavements, but you could drive it away." You can tell we are not far from Liverpool! I had issues with the reversing into a bay exercise, but after I’d done it he explained that they’ve set their course up shorter and narrower than at the test centre, so if you can crack it in their yard you can piss it at the centre. I like the attitude. As the Russian army are reported to say, "Train hard, fight easy." Right, time is slipping away, it’s time to don my fat suit, crack open a Yorkie bar and slip my Sun newspaper in my bum cleavage. Let’s go to work. By the way, when I’d finished yesterday and got back into the mighty Micra I burst out laughing. It was like getting into a toy car! Dinky little steering wheel, biddy gear stick, titchy car. Time to terrify some more car drivers. Later, Buck.