Testing Testing

Today was the day for testing my Beta Blockers in readiness for Thursday. 

They were sorely needed. Things have not gone well on the driving front in the past forty eight hours. In fact it was safe to say that until this morning I have been hurtling down the greasy pole of ‘fucking hell’ faster than a pig in a lycra all in one.

Yesterday I had another double lesson, in which my instructor solemnly informed me that he thought we had run a red light on my Thursday morning lesson and that if the police  camera was working there would be a fine and points on my licence.  What joy. I have not even taken the test yet and already I am a criminal.  As it is, it isn’t even an exciting crime, because I have absolutely no memory of doing it at all, and the instructor never mentioned it at the end of Thursday’s lesson.  He has said that as he didn’t stop me from doing it, and thought I would make it across before the lights changed, that he will pay the fine, but I will have to take the points.

This is bad. New drivers can only get six points on their licence before they are forced to take their theory and practical driving test all over again. I am plucking my feathers out with despair.

Not only that, but he told me at the beginning of the two hour lesson. My urge to burst into hysterical tears and immolate myself with the cigarette lighter  had to be reined in for two hours while I drove round on my eyebrows in utter misery.

Then I came home and took to my new Chaise Longue. The Chaise Longue of Despair.

Did I mention how much I hate driving? I think I did somewhere, repeatedly.

So, this morning dawned bright and early, and not only did I have to go out again for more driving practice, but I had to do it in my car, with the children.

I blew the dust off the beta blockers and read the side effects, to whit:

• hallucinations
• shortness of breath
• loss of feeling in the extremities
• significantly decreased heart rate leading to possible collapse
• Agitation
• Depression

To name but a few of the jollier ones.  I could not wait.

I took them.  I sat, maudlin’, waiting for my head to explode, blood to come spurting out of my ears and the ghost of my grandfather to come looming out of the broom cupboard.

Luckily, none of these things happened.

We went driving.  We drove and drove and drove.

It was o.k. 

It was weird.

It reminded me a lot of having an anaesthetic when you go to the dentist.  You feel them tugging away at your tooth with a pair of pliers and a monkey wrench, and you know it should hurt like buggery, but it doesn’t.  Nevertheless your brain insists on running about inside your head shouting: ‘Ow! Ow! Urgh! Argh!’ and then ‘Oh! That’s odd.  Ewwww!’ and then both things simultaneously until, if you think about it too much, your head, like sage old Aunty Squirrel says, plunges into the wok of doom.

I could feel the clammy tendrils of panic swirling around in my lower portion, but then it was like a large cement block was plunged firmly on top of them so they could not transmit any more information to the rest of me.  It was mildly unnerving.

Nevertheless it worked.  And I didn’t feel tired, and I didn’t see my grandfather’s ghost, and I did not drop dead.  All of these things are jolly good.

I cannot say it was a pleasure, because that would be an utter lie.  And I cannot say that I would like to use them regularly, because it is clear that they merely create a kind of panic blockade rather than do anything whatsoever to address the root cause of my need to run round the house banging a brass gong and screaming: ‘We’re all going to die!’ in people’s faces, but for the purposes of getting me through the next week without me trying to hang myself from the steering wheel of a VW Polo, it is good.

Advertisement