Learning to Drive

I am learning to drive again. From scratch, apparently. I don't think the last dozen years of driving have made any difference. I am driving on the left hand side of the road and the right hand side of the car, and the car is of course a stick shift. Thankfully, my U.S. driver's license is good here for one year, so I am not required to have an 'L' (for learner) sticker on the back of my car. However, most of the time I'm driving I do feel I need an L on my forehead.

I have been practicing in a big park with several car parks (those are parking lots, my fellow Americans) in it. I use the car parks to practice starts and stops, the most difficult and most needed maneuvers, especially in the nasty traffic we have around here. Today I managed to only kill the engine twice. Hooray!

Eventually I may feel confident enough to go take my driving test with a very picky English examiner from the DVLA. I know they are picky because a friend of ours has taken the test seven times and has failed every time. He's got grit; I think I would lose my nerve after the first couple of rounds.

So wish me luck in this whole new world of driving. Of all the new things I've experienced here, I think this is the strangest.