I can drive!

Three years ago I decided to bite the bullet and get some lessons and trade in my decrepit looking Learner’s Permit (it’d been around for a long time) for a Probationary Licence. My Learner’s Permit had proved itself useful in providing me with ID on occasion but it really was getting less and less use the older I got (don’t often get asked to prove my age anymore.)
Three years ago I also turned thirty. A milestone birthday. It’s now or never, I thought. While generally happy to get about on PT, it would be handy to have another option. Fear of driving in the city will no longer hold me back. I’ll find an instructor to take the fear away.
I found Ivan von Stropi. From 10.30 am to 11.30 am on a Saturday morning Ivan and I would drive around Elwood and South Melbourne and, for a change of scene, Carlton. He gave me lots of driving tips, boyfriend advice (although I did not have one at the time), tried to sell me his house in Healesville, spent one memorable lesson showing me when it was appropriate to toot the horn at other cars and would also make me do hideous reverse parks outside crowded cafes before hauling me out of the car and buying us both a coffee which we would consume in a very civilised way before getting back in the car and driving home. I think the distraction therapy worked. I lost my out and out fear of metro driving completely.
I also passed my test despite crying in the car in the lesson prior to it.
That was three years ago. Aside from one binglette it has been trouble free driving. (I have not done a reverse park since.)
Yesterday I paid the fee, had a new photo taken, signed the paper, threw away my P plates and got me a new, big person licence.
Then I took the train home because the car is currently up on a hoist having ‘something’ done to its transmission.
It’ll be a bit funny not having to remember to put the P plates on the car when I take it out. Might make life less distracting for those young male P plate drivers who, upon seeing a single female alone in a car sporting similar P plates, have been known to zoom up behind or beside me waving madly, only to be completely thrown to find a 30+ old lady with (on a bad day) bits of grey hair fluffing about looking back at them in a very disapproving manner.