Trusting your life to another driver

Long Way Round has finally made it to the top of my reading list and as Ewan and Charley climb into the back of a strangers BMW for a lift to who knows where in Ukraine, it got me wondering about been driven by other people. Their driver drove like there was no tomorrow and Ewan was convinced the man was from the notorious local mafia and was driving them to an early grave. In actual fact he was driving them to his house for a night of eating, drinking and playing with guns!

Like most people my first experience of been driven by somebody else was by my parents. I can’t say that I ever gave the quality of their driving much thought, although my Dad’s lack of direction finding was memorable. So much so that every time I hear John Denver singing ‘then my daddy read a sign and took us the wrong direction’ I think of my Dad.

My grandparents would have been the next or more accurately my granddads, this was back in the day when most women didn’t drive. My Granddad Frank drove extremely sedately with a fag in his mouth and was content that we would get there eventually. It probably came from the days when he drove a pop wagon for a living and would get paid however long it took as long as he sold some pop on the way. The best trips were with my brother and cousins sat in the boot of his Ford Escort Estate playing games and making up stories about what it would be like if we were poor and had to live in the car.

Granddad Norman on the other hand drove like his life depended upon arriving as quickly as possible and having been a taxi driver for many years it probably did – that next fare could be the difference between chicken and beef for Sunday roast. My Gram Gram never sat in the front and when they came to visit it always looked like my granddad was chauffeuring her around.

After getting married I had a father-in-law who drove us sometimes. He drove a huge Audi Quattro as if he owned the road. We felt safe with him until we hit country roads where he would stray across the white line to straighten corners without any concern for cars coming in the other direct.

My brother-in-law was no better, he drove us around the houses in North London near where he lived and I distinctly remember saying to my wife ‘we will be okay unless he meets himself coming the other way.’

But it was on holidays abroad that things got really interesting. When we went to stay with a friend in Ghana we were happy to discover that she had asked a family friend to drive us around for the duration of our stay. But it was a bit of a shock on the first morning when she informed us she was going to work and the driver would arrive soon. When we heard a commotion in the walled garden outside we braved the horse sized dogs to investigate and met a tall dark stranger who said he would take us anywhere we wanted.

Fortunately Genevieve had suggested some places and the four of us climbed into his tiny Rav4 and set off. His driving was fine even though he wasn’t paying attention most of the time as he conducted his business on his mobile phone for the next half an hour. Eventually he apologised and introduced himself as Prince.

He took us everywhere we wanted to go and a few places besides, like to show off his building site and to show us off to his mum and sisters – most odd.

It was only when we got stuck in traffic that it became surreal. He drove along the pavement and pedestrians jumped out of the way without complaining and then when we came across the police directing traffic they stopped both lanes in all four directions to let us through. Turned out he had bought his car from a diplomat and hadn’t changed the number plates as he should have – we felt like royalty.

Our most recent excursion was with my Dad’s cousin Malcom, who’s 77 going on 50. He drove us to the North West of Cyprus where the tarmac roads run out and the bondu starts. Being off-road there wasn’t a problem it was being off-road when we weren’t supposed to be that shocked us.

He drove us into a dead-end (it must be a generation thing) and on seeing the road we wanted to be on across a field he uttered the words ‘we can go anywhere in a Mitsubishi,’ selected four wheel drive and tipped us over the edge of the pavement down a steep hill into the sandy field.

 Now what’s that URL for Uber?