I am feeling oddly disorientated and out-of-focus.
This is because the day has not at all followed the usual pattern, and life feels peculiarly disjointed and slightly puzzling, in a not-sure-what-to-do-next sort of way.
I have not done any of my usual things today. Mark and Lucy washed up and hung the washing on the line, because I was not here.
I was in Lancaster doing my Naughty Motorists’ Course.
Last summer, whilst late to collect Oliver from school, I drove too hastily past a police officer waving a camera in the army’s Tank Driver Training Area, which has a slow speed limit for obvious reasons, and some time later got a letter in the post explaining that I was very naughty, and must be taught the error of my ways.
The consequence for such wickedness, the letter explained, would be either to pay sixty quid and have three points added to my licence, or alternatively to pay ninety quid and attend a course designed to reform naughty motorists.
Given that I have just forked out three thousand quid for insurance without any speeding points, reluctantly I chose the latter, and today made my way to Lancaster where a little room in the basement of the Holiday Inn had been set aside for the purpose.
This was not nearly so bad as it could have been. Other naughty motorists have told stories of horrible disused school buildings with plastic chairs and draughty lavatories. The Holiday Inn was pleasant and civilised with tablecloths and decent coffee and comfortable chairs, and a choice between still or sparkling water, which to be honest is the very least I think you should be entitled to for ninety quid.
Possibly because of such top-notch facilities, it turned out to be such a popular event that there were dozens of people there and the course was split over several rooms, obviously there are a lot of naughty motorists in Lancaster.
We sat down and wrote our names on a piece of card in order that the instructors were not obliged to shout “You, boy!” when somebody was not paying attention or throwing paper darts. Then a portly lady wearing what appeared to be pyjamas directed our attention to a large projection screen and explained that we were there to find out about driving too fast.
I thought that this was a little unnecessary. It could be argued that I know a great deal about driving too fast, as indeed did everybody in the room, and I regret to say that now, several hours later, I am no more enlightened than I was at the beginning.
She talked earnestly about stopping distances, and explained how much thinking time you get compared to how much stopping time, and then illustrated how likely you are to be mashed to an unrecognisable pulp if you hit something at eighty miles an hour.
Quite apart from being perfectly well aware of this, I thought privately that this was not a terribly useful illustration, as almost nobody is driving at eighty miles an hour when they have an accident. Even according to the pyjamaed tutor, you see the hazard, brake, and slow down, so by the time you are still going too fast to stop you are probably doing about thirty.
I did not enter into discussion about this because I had promised Mark that I would not argue. My personal opinion was that the difference between seventy and eighty is vanishingly small when it comes to choosing a preferred speed at which to be hit by a lorry.
There was a lot of rabbiting about what makes people speed, which I thought was terribly self-indulgent. Nothing makes me drive too fast. I do it when I want to go faster than you are supposed to and I think that the risk is small enough to make it worth it, when I am not expecting an oncoming tank, for instance.
Obviously I might be wrong about the risk, which is why we have got speed cameras and traffic rules. The point of these is to stop me using my own judgement and to accept the one decided for me by people who have thought about it for a living.
I have got no problem with any of this at all. I got a speeding ticket because, in the words of a famous pirate, I was naughty and got caughty, and I am sorry to admit that I had done it again, without getting caughty this time, before I was halfway home.
We had to write answers in a little booklet, which we were supposed to keep as a souvenir, including a self-righteous little section where we were supposed to list the dangers of speeding, the wise things we had now learned, and the things we would do in order to become better people in the future.
This irritated me so much that I left the whole thing blank, apart from a small sketch of the pyjamaed lady, and dumped it in the rubbish bin on my way out.
I was on my rebellious own with that one, and in refusing to participate in the self-criticism held at the end, if I had lived during the Cultural Revolution I would have been shot in the first fortnight. There were some terribly penitent people, some of whom were almost in tears at the thought of their own misdeeds.
I hope I never get stuck behind any of them.
It was over in the end and we dispersed. I resisted the temptation to head directly for the bar, and instead made my way home, where Mark has gone off to his maths class and Lucy is doing her homework.
What an educated family we are.
I am not going to go to work. I have had quite enough for one day.
I have written to you now, and so my duty is done.
There is a box of wine in the cupboard.
