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Lesson seven was just driving around and ensuring I change down gears at the correct point on approaches to certain traffic features. Not sure why I kept trying to change gears earlier than I should – maybe I’m tying the gears to the car’s speed too much.

Lesson eight did more driving and I seemingly had gotten really good at it. Driving line is fine, stamping the accelerator more, etc. Then I did something really fucking stupid. In fact, twice, but only the first time was mind-blowingly dangerous.

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I didn’t do separate posts for lessons five and six because they would’ve just been like lesson four. That, and doing a new post every time is becoming a bit “meh” as it’s the last thing I want to do after constantly concentrating and driving.

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Nervous. Anxious.

The way I was feeling, you’d think I was about to head into war. Screw trying to calm down, and instead jump nut-first into a bout of theory question and hazard perception binging.

I spent all morning going through various parts of my Driving Test Success disc (that doesn’t link to the specific one I had, but I’d highly recommend you get that one instead). In fact, it dawned on me that I could answer the questions without actually reading the questions. A good sign, surely.

Next!

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I’ve just finished my last lesson of the RapidPass beginner’s course. £50 for 6 hours, spread across four lessons as I opted to do them in 1.5 hour sessions. 1 hour simply isn’t enough, so I’d say go for 1.5-2 hours if you’re still deciding.

How did it go? Why, lemme start by saying “Holy bloody shit”.

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Third lesson was done this morning. Got another in a few hours. How did it go?

Before I start, lemme recap on the previous instalments like a crap American reality show. It took me around 15-20 seconds to find the biting point each time due to how slow and cautious I was being with the clutch release. My feet flailed around while keeping both the clutch and gas at biting point when I looked around the car in preparation for moving off. I had to always look at the gears when changing; kept reaching for the handbrake as I kept thinking the gears were located there.

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I had my second lesson yesterday, about 2.5hrs after my first. The main reason for this post is to fully explain the problem I’m having that I somewhat mentioned on Twitter. Oh, and I did a load of roundabouts and a couple of T-junctions in this lesson. But anyway, onto my post that is basically me having somewhat of a tantrum.

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Oh bejeezus. I’ve just had my first (1.5hr) driving lesson. Absolutely terrifying.

The car I’m learning in is a new, white diesel Fiesta. Other than hitting my knee getting in and out of the car on the steering column, it’s a nice car. My instructor was great, too.

Those two nice things didn’t stop me entering the panic zone an hour in, though, did they?

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That previous post didn’t go so well, did it?

I chose Red Driving as my driving school, and I regretted it a couple of days later. See the previous post to see why.

Nothing much left to do than just go ahead and pick another school. So I chose my second choice, and that was Rapid Pass. They’re not some national company, but a small company with a few offices in the surrounding area. Their lessons sounded exactly what I wanted: 1.5 hour lessons and multiple lessons a week via a semi-intensive course, with more or fewer per week as required.

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Update: I’d probably suggest avoiding Red Driving School; post has been updated to reflect my experience with them.

Now that I have my provisional licence and all that good stuff, I can now finally get on the road. and run over children

It didn’t really occur to me what a pain selecting a driving school would be. There’s just so many of them, and no useful resource with user reviews and such. Not one that reviews anything local, anyway.

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I haven’t really looked into this driving malarkey before, so where do I start? It appears I need a provisional licence to actually get behind a steering wheel, so I’d better sort that out.

Doing a search turned up this government page (bearing in mind that I’m in the UK; you may have your own version if you reside in another hell hole) with a whole raft of information on motoring in general. A quick poke about shows that I can apply for a provisional licence online, right there on that site.

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