What a day!  Chrystal passed her driving test, at the first attempt.  Well… first attempt at the practical anyway: the theory took two bites.  The first one was close though – I encouraged the girl by telling her that the result was not a fail but that she nearly-passed.Now she is all excited, pleased and proud but that will soon turn to frustration because there is no way she will be driving our car, and buying and insuring a second car is outside our budget at the moment.  Insurance is the killer of course.  With my old 1-litre hatchback I was quoted an increase of £1000 per year to add her onto the insurance, which seems to me like just the insurer’s way of telling me to piss off..  I could shop around and get a better overall deal I suppose, but it is still going to be a lot to insure a 17-year-old for a 2-litre car.

Not that a great big estate car is something a new driver really wants to be driving anyway, especially when it comes to the parking.  Not after spending all their lessons in small hatchbacks.

When I passed my test (in my late 20’s) I didn’t buy a car for a couple of years.  In fact, after I passed it was a full six months before I drove anything at all.  That was a company pool car so I could get to a meeting, and I had to take a few minutes to remember what all the pedals were for.  I suspect Chrystal is not going to be as patient as I was.

To tell the truth though, it is a bit of a relief that she will not be on the road much, if at all, for a while.  Each week the local papers are full of stories of  crashes, pictures of cars wrapped around lamp posts and coverage of funerals for young drivers and the protective aprt of me would still prefer to see her miserable than mangled.

Still… she has a weekend job and can now save up all the money she would otherwise have been paying on lessons, so maybe she will be in a position to get a little runaround.  Or she could spend it all on lottery tickets and be in with a chance of being able to afford insurance on a small runaround if she gets six numbers.