East of Easton

I moved to Easton recently. For the most part this was a brilliant decision, but there are three major disadvantages to my new location.

1. I no longer get given a Metro on my way to work, meaning that I am now dangerously uninformed about spiders and Kristen Stewart. I feel bad that I never got to say goodbye to my regular Metro vendor. We got on really well. She used to drop the paper into my open bag as I walked past like it was the relay baton in the yuppie Olympics.

2. There is now a school on my way to work whose uniform is identical to my work uniform, meaning that a lot of people assume I’m either in my tenth year of GCSE resits, or I’m in the middle of a very difficult puberty.

3. The nearby Lidl means that I’m now drinking an average of 1.8 cans of Freeway Cola a day, which is 1.8 cans more than your recommended daily allowance of Freeway Cola. I’m drinking so much Freeway Cola that I’ve decided to seek corporate sponsorship for this column, which will henceforth be known as “Canned Laughter- The Freeway Cola Comedy Column” Don’t worry though, you won’t notice the difference.

Overall, I’ve found the change of scenery refreshing, like a delicious can of Freeway Cola. My rent is cheaper, there are more shops nearby, and bin day is on a Monday which means I get to say “Monday’s are rubbish” every week and get a small but respectable laugh from my housemates. It’s recycling day as well so nobody can blame me for reusing jokes.

I’ve also been learning to drive for the last six months. (Technically I’ve been learning to drive for the last eight years but there was a seven year gap in the middle during which I mostly viewed cars as a moving obstacle between me and the nearest Primark, like Frogger in skinny jeans).

I am not what you would call a natural driver. My overwhelming need to be liked by everyone makes it very hard for me to pilot a death machine in a way that I feel suits my personality. If there was a button that made the car smile and apologise I’d be a lot more comfortable. Instead, I tend to overcompensate with excessive use of the thank-you wave. Most of my lessons are spent thanking every motorist/pedestrian/dog that I pass and then apologising to my instructor for being so thankful. This constant fluctuation between gratitude and remorse turns every lesson into a grueling emotional rollercoaster, if rollercoasters were made by Honda and almost never went faster than 20mph.

My inability to drive is especially frustrating because a lot of my time at work is spent helping other people renew their driving licenses, so I’m well aware that the standards for motorists aren’t exactly high. I once served a man who had ticked “yes” next to every medical condition on the form because he “thought you had to tick all the ones you don’t have”. He can drive. I cannot. To be fair to him he looked pretty good for someone with both gout and leprosy.

My main downfall is roundabouts. I still have no idea how they work, but I have learned that when you’re discussing them with your driving instructor it’s best not to use the phrase “leap of faith”. There’s a big roundabout near my new house on which I have particular trouble. I always miss the exit and my instructor has to grab the wheel and steer me in the right direction, which happens to be towards Ikea. Perhaps I had a traumatic experience with self-assembly furniture as a child which makes me unable to approach it head-on.

My instructor has a technique when I make a serious mistake such as this. He pulls me over to the side of the road and says “lets have a chat”. It’s good to know that I’m getting therapy included  in the price of my lessons. Sadly the driver’s seat doesn’t recline far enough for the full Freudian experience. Maybe if I dug deep enough into my subconscious I’d discover that I’m bad at roundabouts because they remind me of my mother.

Speaking of my mum, I enlisted her to help me move last week. This involved two return journeys between Bedminster and Easton in a car mostly filled with dried pasta and Curb Your Enthusiasm DVDs (The structure of these columns didn’t happen by accident). I was travelling light as I’d cleared out my old bedroom the previous night, during which I discovered a stash of flyers for my wildly unsuccessful 2014 Edinburgh Fringe show. There’s nothing like throwing away 3,000 pictures of your own face to make you feel like a winner.

I managed to get my mum progressively more lost on each journey (Kingswood is lovely this time of year), but eventually we approached my house for the final time. As we neared our exit on the roundabout, I realised that my mum was going to miss it and carry on. I grabbed the wheel and steered her towards Ikea. She was visibly shaken, like an improperly stored can of delicious Freeway Cola, so we pulled over to the side of the Freeway for a chat.

“Sorry”, she said, “I hate roundabouts.”

Then she saw the Ikea and laughed.

“I didn’t realise you had an Ikea so close to your house. Don’t get lost in there like you did when you were 12.”

In therapy, that’s what’s known as a breakthrough.

Drink Freeway Cola.

Read more by Martin Pilgrim here.