It has taken me most of my adult life to admit this - having passed my driving test first time at the age of 17 - but recent experiences have proved that I'm not really cut out to be a driver.

In my teens, my dear old dad was very trusting and allowed me to borrow his faithful Morris Marina as soon as I has passed my test.

I well remember my first disaster with dad's car. It was just one week after passing my test and I had been to see a pal. As I drove back down the street, I saw dad sitting in his friend's furniture van outside our house. Although he worked days at British Aerospace, he also helped out with furniture deliveries in the evenings and usually, they would sit and have a chat before dad alighted from the van.

As I drove towards them, I thought I would impress my dad with my driving skills. Waving cheerfully through the open driver's window, I attempted to swing the car up our drive, as I had seen dad do countless times.

Unfortunately, I totally misjudged the distance and instead ploughed into the solid brick gatepost, denting the wing and taking off the driver's door.

Luckily, dad was very easy-going and after the repairs had been done through the insurance, he allowed me to drive his car again.

It was great being the only one of my circle of friends with a car, as we were able to pile in and drive over to Manchester to see live bands, which would normally have been out of the question, as we couldn't have got a train back in time.

When I had been driving a few months, I became more confident and we even used to drive to Leeds and Sheffield to see bands. We had a great time, stopping off for coffee and chips at the motorway services on the way home.

I used to sneak in often in the early hours of the morning, hoping mum and dad were asleep so I would not be ticked off for staying out so late.

Dad always needed his car to set off for work at 6.30am ... and one day, I had a real disaster.

We had stayed much too long on the services on the motorway and on the way back from a late night concert, it was raining and visibility was poor, which meant I started panicking at how late it would be when I got home.

Arriving back in Blackpool, it was nearly 4am and I knew I would be in deep trouble. Coming off the motorway, I pelted through the traffic lights and round the bend in the road. But unfortunately, because it had been raining, the road was very slippery and I skidded off the road.

The car bounced over a traffic island - managing not to hit any bollards - and came to a halt the wrong way round. We were unhurt - just shaken - and initially I thought I had got away with it.

But when I started the car, it started to make the most AWFUL noise - a kind of squeaking noise coming from the wheels - and it wouldn't move an inch.

Then I found the cause - the wheels were actually facing sideways on - the whole chassis had been damaged severely by the impact of the traffic island and the car could not be moved.

I was frantic.

"Dad'll kill me," I told my friend.

I will never forget, to this day, my dad trudging up the hill towards the car at around 4.30am, following a tearful phonecall. He was wearing his waterproof jacket and flat cap, rain water dripping off the end of his nose and his glasses, and carrying a bag of various tools including a huge mallet. For all the world, he looked like he was equipped to do a burglary.

Without a word, he walked up to the car, told us to get out and somehow, using brute force, he hammered and hammered at the wheels until, miraculously, they were facing the right way round again. Luckily, we lived only up the road and somehow, he got behind the wheel and managed to wrestle the car home so he could arrange for it to go into the garage.

Even though my dad, bless him, died in 1999, this is one of the most enduring images I will ever have of him.

Some dads would have gone mad, but not mine. He knew that the trauma of the crash and the guilt I felt at severely damaging his pride and joy - not to mention having no transport - was punishment enough.

It is only when you get older that you realise the implications of your actions and the fact that I single-handedly destroyed his seven-year no claims bonus in one thoughtless instant.

But it is not only accidents that have been the bane of my life.

If anything can go wrong with my car, it will.

I have lost count of the number of times I've had a flat battery over the years. It must run into hundreds.

I've had exhausts drop off in the middle of the road, alternators go, tyres blow out and the all-time classic, my windscreen cracked after my over-zealous dogs headbutted the rear-view mirror while trying to attack an innocent passer-by.

Even a trip to have my car valeted when I was feeling 'flush' turned to disaster when the apprentice at the car valeting firm crashed it into a concrete rubbish-bin. It took me two months and the threat of legal action to extract a cheque for the repairs, as the garage owner said the culprit was 'new to the job' and that it 'wasn't really his fault', as if he was expecting me to say it didn't matter. As the damage amounted to £100, I was more put out than he expected.

Perhaps my most spectacular accident was one that occurred while watching an amateur football match a couple of years back. I had driven to the pitch-side, as it was chilly. At half time, I decided to pop to the shop and buy drinks and chocolate to keep me going during the second half.

Trying to be smart, I cut through another part of the hedge to get on to the road, as otherwise I would have had to drive right round the pitch and I was in a rush.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the gap I went through did not, in fact, lead straight to the main road. In fact, there was a 2ft drop on to concrete at the other side and by the time I realised, it was too late to stop. The front end of the car kind of crunched on to the concrete and the impact underneath wrecked my exhaust and various other parts of the engine, including the radiator.

I had to get the breakdown firm to bring out specialist lifting gear to rescue me and the car was in the garage a week having £500 repairs done.

I am currently using public transport. You may be surprised to learn this is not because I have given up driving as a bad job. (I probably should).

No ... my car has broken down (again).

I'll let you know what happens.

See you next time.



September 15,2007

HAVE you ever dreaded something which you knew was going to be a good thing in the long term?

This was how I felt when I needed to have a new boiler fitted after the old one - a throwback to the '70s by the looks of it - finally packed in.

We'd struggled on with it for about two years. It started behaving in a most temperamental manner, turning itself off and refusing to reignite. This often left us without central heating for about a week until a gas engineer could come out, which meant we were reliant on the dry heat of fan heaters.

Somewhat reluctantly, we waved goodbye to the old Baxi, which was behind a gas fire (that also didn't work) in the living room. And instead, we said hello to the new technology of a combi-boiler in the kitchen.

I was advised it was a two-day job, so I booked the time off work.

I was also supposed to be booking four of our eight dogs (the four pups) into the kennels, rather than letting them try to lick the gas man to death.

However, as is normally the case, something went wrong and this didn't happen, because the kennels had double booked - so I found I was lumbered with all eight dogs when the big day arrived.

So although we were immensely looking forward to having a lovely new boiler that actually worked, the noise and disruption to reach this end was something I was dreading.

The gasman turned up some 20 minutes early, when I was still running around the house in a bath towel, so I frantically banished the dogs to two bedrooms, shut the cat in the boxroom and quickly threw my clothes on.

The older dogs were okay. But the four pups, furious at the confines of the spare room, barked incessantly with such vigour that I had to go and sit with them to calm them down.

Hastily, I made the gasman a cup of tea and then retired upstairs.

All manner of hammering and banging went on and at various periods throughout the day, I went to investigate what was going on.

The first job was removing the old, useless gas fire from the living room. I thought this was great, as it was an eyesore.

But little did I know I had misunderstood the deal with the new boiler. It did not, in fact, include a replacement fire.

So when I again went downstairs for a progress report, I was most upset to see a 3ft deep, gaping hole, filled with dust and old, redundant pipes, in the living room wall.

"Umm ... don't I get a fire?" I said, hopefully.

"Oh, no, love - the price only included the boiler," said the engineer, cheerfully.

Always read the small print - a lesson to be learned there.

He added enthusiastically: "Perhaps you could turn it into a decorative alcove, love? A lot of people do."

But there was certainly nothing decorative about the old, tatty brickwork and the edges of the 1970s floral wallpaper poking through.

His work continued long into the afternoon, until, at 5.30pm, he announced he had done as much as he could for the day and went on his way.

Sadly, this did not yet include linking the shiny new boiler up to the hot water system.

I turned the hot tap on - only to find nothing happened and no water came out. All we had was icy cold water, so preparing a bath was great fun, as it involved boiling the kettle 20 times.

The following day, the same procedure ensued - gasman came early, yapping dogs were shut in the bedrooms and I sqirrelled myself away in the spare room again after making a cup of tea.

Imagine my delight when, mid-afternoon, he announced he had finished - and I discovered a scene of mass destruction in my kitchen.

The new, copper pipes snaked their way through a hole in the wall, from the living room, passed above the cooker, down the side of the boiler and were attached underneath. He had actually set the wall alight in one spot with his soldering pipe and black burn-marks scorched the pale lemon paintwork.

"Um ... shouldn't these pipes be covered in?" I ventured hopefully.

"Oh, you need a joiner to do that, love," he replied smilingly. "I did point that out before I started."

Maybe I just forgot?

Directly above the boiler and down the side, the remaining wallpaper was hanging off. He had enthusiastically stuck it back together with black masking tape, perhaps in the hope I may not notice.

On seeing my aghast expression, he said, "It was damp anyway, love. It would've fallen off eventually."

Hmm .. but perhaps not just yet.

He had moved the cooker about 2ft along to accommodate the new boiler, leaving the main plug socket for the cooker and washing machine about one inch above the grill. Voicing my fears that the socket may, in fact, alight, I was told, "There was nowhere else for it to go."

As the move had also involved dismantling one of my kitchen surfaces, where I had prepared food, the room looked like it had been ransacked by burglars.

Wondering where the wooden kitchen surface had gone - as it was about 4ft long by 2.5 ft wide - I discovered the gasman had imaginatively placed it over the hole in the living room where the gas fire used to be.

"At least your cat won't be able to get in there," he said helpfully.

Oh, well, at least we had a nice new boiler and constant hot water and radiators, I thought to myself.

What we didn't have, however, was a cooker.

After he had gone, all attempts to get it going failed and a nasty burning smell ensued. I realised the wall socket was no longer working.

Had the gasman drilled through or loosened a wire while installing the boiler, I wondered?

Hastily, I called an electrician, but to this day, he has been unable to ascertain why the wall socket keeps blowing and fears it may be a rewiring job. However, he is loathe to link it directly to the new boiler being fitted only inches away.

So we are at stalemate - a highly expensive electrical investigation and possibly rewiring the house - or living on microwave meals, salads and stuff prepared in the George Foreman grill.

Mmmm ... microwave lasagne here I come.

See you next time.

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