Stick that, Hose!!!

Was rather nervous about my driving test this morning. My last 'lesson' with Hose was on Monday night and I swear he spent the whole hour and a half trying to catch me out and dent my confidence. At the end I asked him if he thought I'd pass and he said I could do if I had a lenient inspector as I still had issues and that's why he said I needed eight extra lessons. I was so nervous about this morning but the worst fear was that I'd fail and have to drive back with Hose being smug. And Paul had arranged for us to collect our car tomorrow so felt under no pressure at all...

I was collected at some ridiculous hour this morning and had an hour driving me around with Hose trying to confuse me again. We then arrived at the driving test location. The test location is just the side of the road in a trading estate type area. About 20-30 cars are given the same time slot and it's first come, first served to form a queue. We got there 40 minutes early and were still the 8th car in line. There was a group of inspectors who go down the line car at a time and you just keep moving along until it's your turn. They had obviously got through the 8.30 cars in good time as I only had to wait until 8.40 even though I had a 9am slot. After all my worry, I was with the inspector less than eight minutes. I needed to show left turns (only one on what I'd call a slightly busy road), right turns, a three point turn and a parallel park. At no point was I actually driving 'in traffic' as there was no cars anywhere. They score you on a point system which gets entered into a computer thing. I got 5 points for taking a left turn too wide, 5 for being away from the kerb after parallel parking and another 5 for adjusting. You can get 30 points before they fail you. The machine printed off a receipt showing all my points and I keep that with my learner permit until my proper license comes through. All rather painless in the end. Now I just can't wait for it to be Paul's turn....

We watched the footie last weekend but it's quite hard to feel the excitement over here as it's hardly mentioned. I was sooooo excited to see Steve McManaman commentating on ESPN as he is my most favourite player in the whole wide world ever and is the face on my special Liverpool mug. For rather different reasons, I was rather pleased to see David Beckham supporting his team mates. He really is a work of art. Paul is working from home tomorrow as he is off to Singapore on Saturday so will be watching again in the afternoon. Wednesday's match is in the morning here so going to watch it with my NY posse with all the little boys in their England strips. I've been getting Boy Wonder in the mood by making him listen to 'Three Lions' about ten times each day. Come on the boys!

As I will hopefully have the car, I'll be able to explore a bit more of our local area and I'm going to try and sort out our membership to the recreation park for special Garden City folk. It has three pools, a playground and cafe. If I get bored, I might tamper with the sprinklers in our garden so Eddie the sprinkler man will have to come and fix them... ;-)

And to finish, big and very special congratulations Elaine. She knows why x