Free Educating Peter by Tom Cox Page B

towards the end of our journey back to Crouch End, when I’d put the first Grand Funk Railroad album in the tape player, Peter had sneakily slipped on his Walkman headphones. Instead, it was something to do with the way Thunderbolt stopped, gazed up at the big American sky and leaned on his car, as if it was a friend he’d be able to trust for ever in the grand game of survival. It was something to do with the monotony of the A11, particularly on the stretch between Barton Mills and Newmarket. It was something to do with the way people didn’t signal when they were going right in filter lanes. It was something to do with the way the Ford Focus went ‘brumm’ and not ‘raaaargh’. And yes, okay, it was just a tiny little bit to do with the litter.
    To put it more bluntly, it was driving: I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I should have been.
    It’s difficult to convey exactly how difficult it was to admit this to myself. Having taken and passed my driving test at the earliest possible opportunity, been in possession of a car for most of my adult life, and frequently enjoyed the bribing opportunities that go hand in hand with being The Kind Of Friend You Can Rely On For Lifts, I’ve always seen being a keen driver as a small yet important part of my self-image. That is to say, I have never thought of a car in sexual terms, don’t know a carburettor from a graphic equaliser, do none of my own repairs, yet regularly drool over Aston Martins, once described fifth gear as ‘creamy’, and look down slightly on male friends without a licence in the way that you would on people who’d never had agirlfriend. I like cars. I like the way they make you feel like an adult, yet can fulfil your kid fantasies. I like the way that, if you think about it properly, they’re just dodgems and go-karts on a bigger scale. I like the way they turn the world into a free-spirited place with beaches and fields and lakes, rather than a bunch of interconnected urban sprawls which just happen to have train stations and bus stations and airports.
    In reverie form, I’d seen the process of educating Peter as being
about
cars. About music, yes, and about Peter’s future, sure, but essentially, on an existential level, about cars. Driving fast in them. Gazing out of them wistfully. Using them to take you somewhere special. However, here I was, a fifth of the way into our journey – a journey which, if I was honest with myself, probably wasn’t going to be quite as geographically diverse as I’d hoped, owing to Peter’s chock-a-block school and social life – and I was feeling as though if I drove again in the next year, it would be a lifetime too soon. Somehow, in the world that Peter and I had inhabited for the last few days, the on-road experience wasn’t quite the same as it was in
Thunderbolt And Lightfoot
. In fact, it wasn’t an ‘experience’ at all; just a normal trip in a family car, which took you where you wanted to go in (if you were lucky) as little time as possible.
    It wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried my best. On the way along the coast to Hastings, I’d pulled over on a grassy verge and stared out towards the English Channel, pondering the meaning of life, thinking that this was a road movie kind of thing to do, but Peter had looked at me strangely and opted to stay in the car, and I’dreturned to the Ford Focus feeling a little bit sheepish and silly. Later, I’d thought about livening things up by ditching the Focus and hotwiring a nearby Vauxhall Vectra, but decided against it on the basis that, if I’d freaked out about getting a parking ticket, I was going to find it difficult affecting a devil-may-care attitude about driving a vehicle with ‘hot’ plates.
    However, I was determined not to give up. After all, I was probably tired from racking up 500 miles and talking to a teenager non-stop for two days, and