Brrm-brrm

Exams finished (thank goodness!) on Friday afternoon. Although most of them went rather well, better than my pessimism beforehand would have allowed, the stress levels around here have dropped dramatically in the last two days.

This means that at the moment, and for the next 3 months, I am free to do whatever I like! Unfortunately, as is so often the case in these situations, I suddenly have a strong urge to do absolutely nothing, and so all those lists I made of "things to do after exams have finished" are sitting around redundantly whilst I ignore them.

Despite my lethargy, I have managed to accomplish a couple of things this weekend. I have updated my books page wishlist in accordance with my Amazon wishlist, giving a total of 60 books I want to read but don't yet have. (I'm currently aiming to exhaust this list by the time I die. Maybe before then if I'm particularly industrious.) I have watched The Third Man (why oh why didn't anyone make me watch it before now?). And I have been learning to drive Kevin's car.

I do have rather a lot of experience driving different cars — two cars at home (and recently a third) plus a dozen or more rental cars whilst I was working during my gap year. I was quite happy with all of them; get in, adjust seat etc., and drive off with barely a stall during the whole year. I think my most traumatic experience was with the automatic-gearboxed car they mistakenly left for me once, with my panic that the car was going to stall every time I used the brake without touching the non-existent clutch. However, Kevin's car threw me for a loop.

We took it down to Sainsbury's carpark yesterday so that I could try driving around at low speeds, and I didn't do very well. My pulling away was rather abysmal, due to a) the accelerator being much more sensitive than I'm used to, and b) the clutch having a much higher biting point than I'm used to. This meant that every time I tried to pull away from a junction I would sit there with the revs getting ever louder and more embarassing until at last I would reach the biting point and we'd shoot off. (Kevin's car is also the first I've ever driven without power steering, which is taking some getting used to.)

I finished my "lesson" rather abruptly and Kevin drove us home since I was still too flustered to do so. However, we went back to Sainsbury's today (Sunday closing, carpark almost empty after 4pm) and I took on board what Kevin had said yesterday, and managed to drive rather well around the carpark. I even drove (2 miles) home afterwards. I think we might get on after all.