June 22nd: The Driving Ban
Insuring the van is an issue. The issue being my driving record. There
was one crash, my fault, in November 2011.
Another collision, entirely not my fault, I wasn’t even in the car, in
October 2013, and then a small matter of that driving ban. Judgment day in Leicester Magistrates’ Court
happened last year when I’d just started seeing a new bloke, a Professor who
was also a Human Rights Lawyer. He had Vivienne
Westwood suits, an art-filled house and was six feet two inches tall. He lived
in Birmingham and I was then in Rothley, a lovely village in north
Leicestershire - on Cupid’s scale of love and miles that wasn’t too bad at all.
How many ticks is that? Yes, high
five. I’d even told my mum to buy a
hat. One other excellent thing about him
was that he was very short-sighted. This meant that if we got to the waking up
in bed together stage he’d be unable to see my wrinkles and think I didn’t look
half bad for a fifty something at half six in the morning.
The lawyer’s name was Phil and on our
first restaurant date I paid for the food, less than £30, and he paid for two
bottles of Champagne and two double brandies.
After fluttering my eyelashes, hoiking up my boobs and sharing a couple
of witty but emotionally endearing anecdotes I confessed to this lawyer about a
legal issue I was facing...
I was a speeder. I had always been a
speeder. I had done two speed management courses, yet I still sped. Fourteen
years ago, I’d reached twelve points on my driving license, but the sympathetic
magistrates let me off as it was the same week that my husband and I were
separating; I needed the car to move to a new house, to get to University to
train to be a responsible teacher and to be the best single mum possible to our
four-year-old daughter. The points
continued to come and go, and the insights l gained from those speed management
courses lasted, ooh, ten days. On one occasion my mum needed to drive my
car for a week, so I phoned the insurance company to arrange it.
“How much will it be?” I asked,
expecting about £20.
“There’s no charge,” the man said. This
seemed odd.
“But how come I don’t have to pay
anything?”
“Quite frankly Ms Lovegrove, we’d rather
your mother drove your car than you.”
But
hallelujah, something must have sunk in and by January last year my driving
license was on zero points. I was a certified
diligent driver and the insurance company liked it too. Unfortunately, I then
made the mistake of buying myself a new convertible with perhaps a little
disregard for the crippling monthly loan repayments. It was the one and only,
never-again, new car purchase of my life. There was one legitimate reason for
the indulgence: I needed a bigger car compared to my Peugeot 106 because
old-dad and new-mum were coming over to the UK from New Zealand for my brother
Yash’s wedding. Parents, luggage and me,
performing the role of airport chauffeur, wouldn’t fit into the Peugeot. The essential new car was a gun-metal grey
and purple Citroen DS3 cabriolet, not exactly an Aston Martin DB9, my wedding
car, or rather, Bill’s and my wedding car, but I loved it. When the sun was smiling with the roof down
and Macklemore singing, I danced on the accelerator pedal in time to the music.
“I'm gonna
pop some tags
Only got twenty dollars in my
pocket
I, I, I'm hunting
Looking for a come up
This is fuckin awesome.”
It really
was. Yes, I’m easily pleased. But I was clocked speeding four times: the first at 37mph, the second at 36, the
third at 39 and the fourth at 37 again. From zero to twelve points in one year,
hence I had a court summons. AND YES, I
KNOW THIS ISN’T BIG OR CLEVER.
When the court case
arrived I hadn’t got to know lawyer Phil well enough for him to mount a
storming defense for me so I turned up in Court Three with just Georgie in
tow. I naively thought that my job might
enable me to be let off, not just because I needed to drive to school to
educate the future leaders, workers and carers of our country, but also because
four nights each week I drove pupils home from school after enhancement
sessions, revision sessions, Monday Movie Club and Friday Writers’ Club. Sometimes I did this in my car, sometimes I
drove the school minibus and sometimes, if there were a lot of kids, it was
both. This made it a long day but it was
enriching for us all.
“Can't their parents drive them home?”
asked the lead magistrate after I explained how Leicestershire’s educational
performance in national league tables would plummet if I couldn’t drive.
“No, sometimes they can't and sometimes,
to be frank, they just won't.”
But my commitment to academic success and increasing social mobility cut
no ice with the magistrates. I was banned for six months and fined £350. It would be one hundred and eighty-three
days of counting the pennies. Four thousand three hundred and ninety-two hours
of watching the clock. I could empathise with Ivan Denisovich. The lead magistrate, a pearl adorned woman of
about eighteen stone, faced me directly; a headmistress suspending a wayward
child, “You really should do something about my speeding habit.
“And you should really do something
about your eating habit,” I didn’t say out loud.
I left the courtroom hotly pursued by a
concerned court usher. “You didn't drive
in today did you?”
“Err,” I hesitated. Was idiocy illegal?
Probably not, I’d survived fifty years without arrest. “Yes.”
“You'd better not drive back; they're
pretty hot on that.” So, in mocking sleet I walked through Leicester's city
centre to the train station, buying an umbrella and hat from Age Concern on
Granby Street. With a £350 fine to pay I
was certainly not going to buy new Barbour wet weather gear from John Lewis.
At the end of the school day a colleague
took me home where a neighbour then drove Georgie, Bill (undoubtedly the
world’s best ex-husband), and me back to Leicester to collect my car, kindly
driven back to Rothley by Bill. The implications of my ban in terms of the
kindness of strangers, neighbours and lovers, new and old, were beginning to
sink in. I entered my end-terraced house
alone. Slumped on the sofa I drank a large red and watched Top Gear.
Comments
Post a Comment