Isn't it amazing how one feels the need to rant when one isn't getting laid anymore? so yeah, thats well over; lessons have been learnt, and one of the important ones relates to the fact that that is all you will hear on that matter from now on.

So - I'm gonna be driving (fairly) soon. After years of non-vehicular and only nominal `driving` i.e. of my friends: crazy [no actual joke here: due to my actions (and some others...) I/we made one of our group go `a little` off the rails, once upon a time..... not intentionally, and really it was down to him as free will dictates that he chose to.....okay, it is a very long story. He was in psychiatric care for about 3 years, and he's just not anything like he used to be. I'm not a bad person... ), of [driving] women: wild :unfeasibly_smug_smiley_face: and of my family: up the wall (*groan* Sorry. I needed a third `driving` gag and it was just too obvious.) I will actually soon be doing the real thing and be driving a genuine, bona-fide, honest-to-goodness automobile.

It will almost inevitably be a clapped-out old SEAT Ibiza (old model) with no soft Southern luxuries (like circular wheels, for example) and will have that true "classic" look and feel to it (read: will be rusted to damnation and hellfire and wont turn corners over less than 1000 yards). But there you go; we all have to start somewhere in the great race of life and car ownership.

I'm desperately hoping not to qualify in 16th place; about a mile behind the starting line and facing the wrong way.

So what, do I reckon, will result of this? Well, I'll tell you. But first I'll explain why it's worthwhile bothering to explain...

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The normal thing for 17-year-olds to do is learn to drive as soon as possible. I have had, from the moment I grasped the concept of what driving actually involves, a different view.

Quite a lot of people put off driving or fail to pass their tests until they are maybe 18 or 19, but still most people in the UK, upon reaching the age of 17, learn to drive as soon as they damn well can and they do well from it. In some ways..

What I saw from watching my Brother drive, when we lived under one family roof before he bought his own house, was that he spent all his time in car-related activities: reading about it, racing it, tuning it, modifying it, washing it, buying another, reading about them, racing them, tuning them, modifying them etc etc. He bought about 5 cars a year for a couple of years, and they took all his money and his time; every last penny and second.

Okay, so my big bro is a VW Master Tech now and was an apprentice grease monkey even back then, but I noticed the same kind of things (perhaps to lesser degrees, but still EXTREMELY noticeable. Conspicuous, in fact) with my friends and almost everyone around me and to be honest, I opted out of the whole `interested in cars` thing before I would even have started because if I'm one thing as a person, I'm competitively elitist. Hey at least I admit it, you're all guilty on some level.

What I saw was a world of cars and racing and modding and buying flash motors and having amazing sound systems etc etc (by the way is anyone else mildly offened by the acronym I.C.E.? It offends my sensibilities it does). - a world where the best of the best was so insanely unobtainable that I may as well not start, because it would take too long to get to an acceptable level of `cool` for my liking and whatever I ever did acheive, some little *fruitcage* er somewhere would usurp it pretty damned quickly.

I wasn't having any of it, and this is not a defeatist attitude; this is a sensible one if you just cut the whole concept of `cars` and `driving` out of your mental picture of the world. It leaves you with so many options. It leaves you with so much money and time to play with, for starters.

Now it doesn't help the situation (if the situation is indeed viewed as a problem) that I have the approximate mechanical proficiency and apptitude for modern engineering as a used KitKat wrapper floating in a post eco-disaster oil spill, but the thing I wanted to avoid was something I still reckon is worth missing out on for a while at least, and for many reasons (i.e. despite the freedom a car affords you it also consumes the larger part of the money that you have to use in exercising your freedom. So how much better off are you when you can still always get anywhere you need to go without your own car?? I've only had to think a bit more about getting myself anywhere worth getting to, hasn't meant I've missed anything I didn't want to!).

That point is worth highlighting in fact: if you have, say, £100 a week you can spare for social and superfluous stuff (a reasonable average) for all of your your own activities besides essential things like rent, food, bills etc. How much of that goes to your car? I've done a few quick calculations/guesses/extrapolations/lies and I reckon the following:-

...its about, say, £17.50 for your insurance each and every single week if it costs you about, at the age of 17, £900 a year on average. This might even be optimistic. An awful lot of young people don't own their own car either, and about £17.50 goes to pay off your loan (if you'd borrowed about £5000 over 3 years, say) and then about £20 for fuel, and if you have repairs costing say £500 every year (a highly optimistic estimate in most young people's cases I know of) thats another £10 each week, and your tax and cleaning stuff and MOT and furry dice and whatnot comes to another £250 - £300, which is £5 every week, then what you have of your free £100 left is a little over £30.

And what if you have any major work to do? Costs could easily fly over and above £500 in a whole year, and this is JUST TO KEEP YOUR CAR MOVING, LEGALLY. What if you want to do absolutely ANYTHING to it at all like buy a new set of pedals or gearstick head top thingy, new engine thingummies (probably spark plugs or the carbeurettor ) or some tasteful racing stripes or even the aforementioned furry dice? What if, like a lot of young folks, you actually really like just driving and driving and driving, and racing - even without ANY improvements at all then, well, your fuel bill alone could easily be double that guessed above for each week which could leav the average young person with about £10 split between 7 whole days to run the rest of their life on!! It doesn't seem sensible to me...

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Extreme view and one that, thanks to economies of influence (I can buy good cars cheap and have my Master Tech of a Brother service & fix them for free) and restrictions of automotive ambition (I'll be buying a cheap-*albatross* 2nd-hand VW/SEAT/Audi thats been checked out by my brother, and costs less than £250) with associated benefits ("so what limitations do I have to accept to get into Insurance Group One?" ) along with the fact that I walk to and from work every day, I should be able to crack this car thing on the cheap and still retain my `freedom`.

Freedom comes with a price, but there are such things as discounts (and I prefer discounts to any kind of credit; no matter what the interest rate they always shaft you in the end).

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Now the reason I have changed my mind about all this nonsensical ridiculous driving malarkey? Its in the genes man, its all in the jeans.

I realise one thing that has become more important than before; driving helps you to get laid!!

Not from a "chicks dig cool cars man, you should get something really flash an' they'll love it, dog" angle, but more from the mindset that it brings out in people and the sense of responsibility it engenders in those that have cars and drive. Most of them anyway.

Now me, I'm the most irresponsible dude out there (actually not at all, but I know how much I can not care about things like driving and driver responsibility and sense of community as drivers Vs, for example, cyclists ) and chicks, well, chicks are pretty goddamn jedi-minded at picking up on subconscious mental routines that guys aren't even aware that they're embarked upon. When it comes to some things, they can tell what you think by the inference of your behaviour before you can recall it from your own f***ing memory. That ain't cool, but its true.) and although I don't do terribly badly with women I know I should be doing better, y'know, from the totally outrageous guys you know who are little more than wh*r*s that there is a huge world of fun out there for the right kind of people, not to even assume one tenth of some of these guy's wh*rishness and behaviour, but to be able to go out whenever one feels like it and know its *possible* to get pretty much any girl in the place, and I guess, if I'm any two things in this world them I'm competitive and hedonistic.

Also the freedom of movement is important, or rather, its important and its nice for that important thing to be effortless; once reasonably priced and unshackled from the chains of personal loans, gas-guzzling, punitive insurance and furry dice; is something that you really do want if you're out and about meeting charming young women in restaurants, sports centres, shopping malls and public toilets It just pays to stay mobile in that kind of world I think.

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There's also the question of my liver, in my mind increasingly becoming something along the lines of "how long has it got, Doctor?" Driving about all over the show should provide me with the kick I need - from all that heady freedom (and fresh air) - and the art of staying sober will hopefully be acheived with the brush of motorised locomotion (we are naturally hoping to avoid rages of artistic temperament and not end up as a crimson & black smear on the palette of unhappy endings. It probably pays to be well aware of the possibility).

But Gawd, Jesus, driving eh? Its a weird one how different people take to it but as I said first off; its all about your level of interest. I heard about the guy who taught my driving instructor back when he was a nipper and well before he knew what he would end up doing himself, and he passed after one lesson back in the days when it was mostly a case of demonstrating that you could operate the controls, and drive in a straight line. How things change - makes you wonder about who are likely to be the most dangerous drivers on the road in a way, if everyone took the risks the vandal hooligan youths of today take on the public highways then I imagine that in the end, they would be the only ones left standing

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Leaving only the title to explain: I remember when we (my friends) all lived closer together, when we could choose who's house to walk to every evening; despite the fact that we always ended up at mine thanks to the lax standard of patrolling in the war against Cannabis there; and I miss that connectivity and ease of socialiability that made every night a night of choice instead of one of restrictions. Yeah I want the freedoms of the car to go out and meet interesting people, make acquaintances both good, bad and even indifferent and work out how to befriend/help/exploit/entertain/shag (delete as applicable) my new friends.

And what can possibly be wrong with that?