At the Beeston test centre today, all the examiners came out wearing identical reindeer sweaters. I thought that was a really nice touch. They’re all really nice people up there, and a real credit to the DVSA.
Unfortunately, my pupil failed, bringing my recent run of six passes on the trot to an end. Just one more test to go before Christmas.
An email alert from DVSA advises that from 8 June 2015 the paper counterpart will no longer be valid and will no longer be issued by DVLA.
You can find a little more information here, but basically from that date you can tear up your counterpart. Those who still have the old paper-style licences from pre-1998 should not destroy them.
DVSA says it will have more information on the run up to the abolition date on how this affects ADIs and learners.
This is becoming an annual event! My mate from Leeds is a big fan, so I go with him each time they tour – which in Quo’s case is pretty much all year round.
The support was Chas & Dave. I have a lot of respect for them as musicians, but they are not my cup of tea. My mate’s wife was less diplomatic: she hates them! Her face when they started “Rabbit” was a picture.
The Quo set list was something like this:
Encore:
Once again, newer bands should take note. Although Quo songs tend to be relatively short and radio-friendly, you were looking at a playing time of well over an hour (based on album track lengths).
You’ve also got to allow for the fact that both Rossi and Parfitt are in their mid-60s, and both have been ill at times in the last couple of years. In fact, this time around they looked fitter and happier than I have seen them since I’ve been attending their gigs.
A very enjoyable way to end the musical year from my perspective. Oh, and I used the same car park as for the Slash gig and got in and out without any fuss.
At the moment, the next gig I’m going to isn’t until March next year.
I recently wrote about a pupil of mine who passed her test in spite of serious misgivings I had concerning her ability to perform under pressure. It turns out that I was wrong – and I’m more than prepared to admit that.
Normally, I don’t have an issue with my pupils being test ready. It’s quite simple: if they’re ready, they’re ready. I know when that is. End of. However, maybe a handful of pupils in a hundred turn out to be real wild cards, and even though they can do everything required of them some of the time on their lessons, they can’t do it all of the time. The $64,000 question is: does that mean they’re not test ready?
A lot of instructors become far too involved, and the point at which their responsibilities end and the pupil’s begin becomes blurred.
I noticed on a forum recently that someone posted how they’d taken a pupil to test who had previously failed with 3 driver faults and one serious fault. The pupil only took a single lesson due to financial constraints between that test and the next. Apparently, the pupil drove well on that lesson, and on the journey to the test centre. But the ADI concludes that the subsequent fail with 8 driver faults and 3 serious faults meant that the pupil wasn’t ready for the test. I can only go on what is written, but that is absolute nonsense. If they could drive well, they were test ready, and the fail was for other reasons.
There are more factors involved than people seem to realise. To start with, most pupils are far more nervous on their second attempt than on their first (not my fault, I can assure you). Secondly, whenever I’ve sat in, I’m sometimes slightly surprised at what some examiners let go just as I am slightly surprised at what others mark as faults. One pupil of mine recently bay parked with more than three quarters of his wheel in the neighbouring bay, but the examiner said he was “on the line” and let it go. I know that virtually every other examiner would have marked it as a fail (I certainly teach them that any part of the car in the neighbouring bay is chasing down a fail). This sort of thing isn’t common – and I have no issue whatsoever with any of my examiners up this way – but it does illustrate the natural variation in standards adopted by different examiners. So what might be seen as a “good” fail with only a couple of faults by an ADI might not be as good as he or she believes had it been marked slightly more harshly.
Then there is the simple issue of time, and its effect on things. One test might be in light traffic and good weather, whereas the next could be in horrendous conditions – God help a pupil on test who drives within half a mile of a school during the mummy run. In one test, the pupil might be emotionally balanced, and yet come the next attempt they might have family or personal issues on their minds. I remember at least two of my pupils over the years who had been openly threatened with losing their jobs if they didn’t pass, and another whose new “dream job” as an apprentice was conditional upon him passing.
And let’s not forget the Hand of Fate, where the jackass who wasn’t there last time decides to approach a junction at warp speed, to pull out, or to attempt to give priority where he shouldn’t, causing a chain of events that result in the pupil messing up under the pressure. One of mine once failed because she braked hard on a mini roundabout when a taxi cut her up, and then got stuck as every twat to her right started piling out over the roundabout regardless (that could happen to anyone, especially if the car has driving school livery on it). The list could go on indefinitely.
There is no way we can teach pupils for every eventuality. Sure, we can teach them how to deal with someone cutting in because it happens often. But we can’t teach them how to handle an armed police raid on a drugs den (it happened to one of mine on her test a few years ago). We can teach them how to deal with an ambulance coming up behind with its lights and siren going. But we can’t always teach them how to handle four unmarked police cars attempting to break the sound barrier, a 24 hour bus lane, and a dickhead behind who didn’t move over after we did, and then pulled up almost alongside us so that the police cars were held up, thus creating a situation that could only result in panic for a new and inexperienced driver (it happened on a lesson I was conducting two days ago). We can tell them to stay calm until the cows come home, but we can’t stop them being nervous to the point of vomiting if that’s part of their biology (I taught a brother, two sisters, and a cousin where ADHD, suspected Autism, and related traits were clearly inherited all the way down the line on the maternal side; and another where Autism in the son is clearly linked somehow with the diagnosed anxiety issues among the mother and all of her immediate family). And we can teach them how to anticipate what others will do until we’re blue in the face, but if they brake sharply on test because the clown in front decides to turn left or right without indicating and they didn’t realise what he was up to, they’re probably going to fail – even though anyone else, including the examiner, might also have done the same.
I’ve said it before, but the driving test is only the beginning of a lifelong learning curve. The test does not yield perfect drivers – and it has never pretended to do so. ADIs need to start remembering this instead of trying to conduct mock tests in their hi-vis jackets and expecting zero faults all the time.
One of my favourite comedy films of all time is How To Murder Your Wife, starring Jack Lemmon and Terry Thomas. The female lead was played by Virna Lisi, a beautiful Italian actress.
So I’m sorry to hear that she has died at the age of 78. I had no idea that she was so prolific, or that she was active up until her death. I also didn’t know that she turned down the lead role in Barbarella, which went to Jane Fonda instead.
An email alert from DVSA says that CGI clips are due to replace the current video clips from early in the new year.
The quality of the clips is stunning – I’d challenge anyone to be able to identify them as CGI while watching them. However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the usual crowd of anti-DVSA Luddites find fault. I predict that someone somewhere will post the usual asinine comment about HPT being “a computer game” before the week is out.
I hope that these clips – or similar clips, at any rate – make their way across to Driving Test Success.
An email alert from DVSA advises that next year – no dates given yet, though somewhere between January and March is mooted – Leicester’s Gipsy Lane test centre will close and tests will relocate to the ex-VOSA building on Cannock Street. Driving tests should be booked as normal in the meantime. The new location (or old, depending on how you look at it) will be refurbished before tests move there.
I’m sure the usual vipers will see something negative in this. However, since DSA and VOSA merged to become DVSA, having separate facilities would be stupid, and the new location is less than 2 miles away from the old (existing) one.
As an update to this, DVSA is asking for feedback on the move. I don’t think they want to know if you like the idea, but rather what your views would be on a gradual switch.
Obviously, only those who use the test centre really ought to be completing the questionnaire.
And in a further update, the majority favoured a straight switch rather than a phased one. The switch will occur between 3-9 February 2015. An Open Day will be arranged prior to the switch.
And one more update advises that there will be an open day on Friday, 6 February 2015 between 10am and 2pm.
I haven’t done this for a while, and I don’t think the Hall Of Shame idea is prominent enough. So I’m going to try this much briefer way of venting my spleen at the arseholes who occupy our roads.
Two questions. What were you doing down the dark road for deliveries only in the West Bridgford Asda at about 8pm on 17 December?
And how the hell did you ever manage to get a driving licence when you pull out in front of people like that? Maybe it was a quick getaway you were after.
Well done Catriona, who passed today with 6 driver faults. She rounds off a great week – six tests, and six passes.
Cat has learnt a lot during her lessons with me. Most notably, the concept of the “sense of humour”. I remember when I was teaching her to reverse round a corner early on, and she had a habit of steering the wrong way. One time I saw where her hands had moved to on the steering wheel and said “if you steer that way you’re walking home”. Cat is (or was) one of those deadpan people who takes things very literally, and the possibility that I might not have been serious did not enter her head. Sarcasm – one of my favourite teaching tools – was anathema to her. Not any more, though. She gives as good as she gets.
She’s already signed up for Pass Plus.
Still a little behind with these updates, but on 29 November I went to see Slash with Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators at the Leeds Arena.
I saw Slash last year in Nottingham and it was a great show.It was notable that he had a great support band – The Treatment – who are making a name for themselves in their own right. Well, this time around there were two support bands. The first was an Australian four-piece called Twenty Two Hundred, who were good.
Even better, though, were California Breed. I’ve been hearing a lot of these on Planet Rock – they’re a “supergroup” consisting of Glenn Hughes, Jason Bonham, and Andrew Watt.
Glenn Hughes played with Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, and was also a member of Black Country Communion (whom I never got to see before they split). I guess it was only fitting that they ended their set with the Deep Purple song Burn. Guitarist, Andrew Watt, was a revelation.
Slash and Myles Kennedy were on fire, though. The set list was as follows:
Encore:
Newer bands (like The Pretty Reckless, mentioned previously) should take note. Here we have 20 songs with an average timing of over 4 minutes, so a minimum playing time of 80 minutes. Add to that the various Slash solos – including one that was 10 minutes or more – and you have value for money… with knobs on.
It’s funny when you think about it. Slash pisses around playing solos, and lesser bands piss around doing absolutely nothing between songs. Slash was polished, that’s for sure.
The Arena was taking no prisoners that night, either. They were doing body scans outside, and they’d obviously confiscated some very unusual items (including half bottles of whisky). I decided to take my camera in in full view, and they didn’t give a damn – they were more interested in the signal my business card wallet was giving on the hand scanner!
Oh, yeah. And this was my first visit to the Leeds Arena since the Edward Street/UKCPS car park scam I was involved in about a year ago. This time I used another car park a short distance away from the arena and was in and out with no delays whatsoever. And parking only cost £5.
A great night. The only hiccup was that I got home at 1.30am and had to get up again at 5.00am to pick a pupil up at 6.30am for an 8.10am test. I’d told him he’d better bloody pass getting me up at that time. Fortunately, he did.