So yes, at the age of thirty (thirty-one next Saturday), I’m learning to drive. They say, after all, that if you can learn in London, you can drive anywhere, though I think that the hidden part of that statement is “that is, if you survive.”

I have to say, against all expectations, I’m loving it. It’s not that I thought I’d hate driving, or that I thought I’d be rubbish at it, it’s just that it never occured to me that it would be quite so enjoyable. I never pictured myself as a driver-in-waiting.

See, when I was growing up in London, our family didn’t have a car, so it never really occured to me that pretty much everyone would need to know how to drive. Both my parents could, but they just didn’t. At the time, public transport was plentiful, well-run and affordable. If we had family to visit in the North of England, or on the Isle of Man, we’d take a variety of trains and ferries to see them. Sorted.

When I moved out to Canada, at sixteen, everyone my age could already drive - they learnt at school. I took some lessons anyway, and got a permit of sorts (Instructor, standing outside the car: “Can you drive?” Me: “Sure” Him, signing piece of paper: “here you go…”) but I never used it. We lived in the middle of nowhere, couldn’t afford gas (let alone a vehicle) and there was nowhere to go (and anywhere we did fancy going we could get to by boat, which you didn’t need a permit for), so why bother?

The subsequent years of travel, study and work have all shared one characteristic: convenient, abundant, cheap public transport. As an impoverished student, the idea of taking lessons, let alone buying and trying to insure a car in my rather salacious bit of Liverpool (and subsequently, inner-city Manchester) was a joke. When London beckoned me back, I was too busy working (and establishing a life in the city) to be fussed with lessons. Besides, the whole point of getting driving lessons is to, er, drive. Which means you should probably have something to practice in before the test, and use afterwards. And in those first few years, as much as I loved the 328 bus (which ran from outside my Kilburn Park home to outside my Fulham office), they wouldn’t have let me drive it, even with a new license, so I never bothered to get one.

And then things changed. Whether it was family moving to various distributed bits of the country, or falling in love with a man with roots (and family, and friends) six hours up the A1, or being a bit better paid or whatever, I’m not sure what the final catalyst was, but somehow, we ended up with a car. And once we had a car…well, then it was only a matter of time (and regular long drives up the A1/M40/M6/M5) before I learned, too.

I found a great teacher who would pick me up from work two lunchtimes a week, and drop me off again outside the office. And I swore that I would learn in three months or less. That was two thirds of the way through December.

In January, I sailed through the theory test (full marks - hoorah!) and then discovered that there was a three month waiting list for the practical exam. Bugger. So now I have a test booked for the middle of April, and I can’t wait. I love driving. Love it. Love it. For those of you who already know how to do it, and who take it for granted, let me tell you this: at thirty, feeling like a granny next to all the other learner drivers on the road, and being someone who sets very high performance standards for herself in pretty much every other aspect of life, it was a giant challenge to even start, and I’m dead chuffed that I finally did.

So now I have a few lessons in the week, and then spend the weekend ferrying P around in lordly style, to the supermarket, or around random bits of London (Hello Isleworth! Hello New Malden!) or, as this weekend, around the back roads of deepest darkest Sussex. It’s enormously fun and rewarding. Probably the best thing is that while I spend most of my working day thinking and planning and imagining, it’s great to get out and do something which requires a different kind of concentration and coordination.

So wish me luck for my test. I’ll let you know how it goes. And in the meantime, if you should see a red blur whizzing past on the A1/3/4/40, think of me, grinning, in the driver’s seat. at last.