The awareness of speeding.

We sleep in until almost eight o'clock, there is no sunlight on the bedroom curtains and the soothing sound of gently falling rain is the first thing I notice when I awake. Norman is snoring quietly in his basket, so I don't disturb him when I get up to make breakfast. We are having kippers this morning, which requires special attention, ie opening the kitchen window and closing the doors to all the other rooms, otherwise the smell of smoked herring will be enjoyed for days to come. Normy absolutely adores them, and as soon as I remove the fillets from their vacuum sealed wrapper, the aroma wakes him and has him trotting into the kitchen, with his tail wagging furiously. After breakfast and a shower, I pack my bag for the weekend, as I shall be sleeping at Sarah's house for two nights, while she and Richard go to London. My speed awareness course starts at 1:15, at Barton upon Humber, just over the Humber bridge, and I still have Norman to walk, so I load his basket and food into the car and then drive us both to North Bar, arriving at a quarter to twelve, with rain still falling steadily. Alice lets us in and after setting up Normy's bed by the kitchen door, I borrow a large umbrella and take the old boy for a toilet spin, around Seven Corners Lane. Norman is in no particular rush and lingers outside the Rose and Crown pub, that has just been take over by the people that run the Italian cafe inside North Bar. They are turning it into a sort of coffee shop/ Trattoria and I am sure they will be successful. After depositing treasure and emptying his bladder, we make better progress and I return him to Alice's care, before setting off for my course. The roadworks on the bypass have now been completed and it only takes five minutes to get to the roundabout at Willerby, where a man in a large four by four gets in the wrong lane and then tries to overtake me on the inside, as we go round the roundabout and onto the road to the Humber bridge. I have to accelerate fiercely in order to avoid being forced into the oncoming traffic and I pull away thinking that the wrong one of us is going to the driving course. The tolls on the bridge have come down, the last time I crossed they were £2.60p each way and now they are £1.50p, it must be marginal keeping the people employed in the booths to collect the money, but the government won't write off the debt owed by the councils on both banks of the river. The course is being held in an old rope factory, called the Ropewalk, which has been converted into an arts centre, and it can be seen from the bridge, through the mist and rain, right next to the yellow expanse of the muddy river. I arrive by five past one and then wait in an ante room, with all the other speeding offenders, although all of us were only marginally over the limit, or we wouldn't have been given this option. The atmosphere reminds me of Saturday Morning detentions at Batley Grammar School, over fifty years ago now, in that foreign country that was my boyhood. We are registered at a quarter past the hour, our identities checked against our driving licences and then the two instructors introduce themselves. They are both in their fifties, one an advanced driving instructor, the other a retired traffic cop and they are experts in drawing the resentment out of us, for having to attend the course. After telling us what we are going to do, the course starts a bit like an AA meeting, with everyone introducing themselves to the class and saying why they have been caught speeding. Just about everyone has been caught by a camera, some fixed, but most mobile and the group is also fairly evenly split between men and women. Our ages range from mid twenties to late sixties and we sit together in little groups, around tables, in the lecture room. Most of the women are sat together, on the table in front of me, but a lady with a hearing aid, who befriended me when I arrived, is sat with me along with a chap who got caught speeding on his second day home after working in China for a year. The afternoon is not at all what we expect and turns out to be more an exercise in Gestalt psychology. Gradually our perceptions of our offences are altered and our understanding of our driving behaviour, as we progress through a series of group exercises. These are punctuated by a tea break after an hour and a comfort break, about an hour after that. Outside the rain continues to fall steadily and those people who smoke, are forced to shelter under the eaves of the building, during these breaks. One memorable exercise, requires us to count the number of times a ball is passed between a team of people in white tee shirts, to make the task harder they are mixed up with another team of people in black tee shirts, also passing a ball. After the video stops, we are asked to state how many passes were made by the white team, and answers vary between five and twenty three, but we are all surprised when the instructor asks us if we saw the gorilla. "What gorilla?" Is the almost unanimous response, except for one person, who has seen the film before. The instructor replays the video and sure enough, a man in a gorilla suit walks from the left, into the middle of the group of people passing the balls, beats his chest and then walks off to the right, it is all done quite slowly and deliberately. So focused were we on counting passes, that we remained oblivious to his presence. By the end of the course our perceptions of our speeding behaviour has been totally transformed and the lazy habits, that we all tend to develop, of driving on autopilot most of the time, thoroughly exposed and challenged. In my case, putting my foot down to overtake a bus that pulled out "unexpectedly", is transformed into a new understanding that "moving buses tend to stop", and "stationary buses tend to pull out". My offence was due to lazy habits, lack of awareness and failure to "read the road". The proof of the pudding, lies in the way I have been driving since, more aware, more alert and more in control. I expect that the benefits may erode with time, but I hope not. I arrive back in Beverley for a quarter to seven, Alice and Louis have already eaten, so I make myself a mushroom omelette and a few slices of toast and then chat to my grandchildren about my interesting afternoon, until Alice takes Louis up to bed. Sarah has made up the guest bed for me in "the office", at the back of the house and I undress and attempt to read my new Patrick Gale novel "The Facts of Life", but find that I am too tired, so go to sleep by nine o'clock.