Hello, says my new driving instructor.

Hello, I say.

Have you had any driving experience before, she asks.

No, I whisper, and to be honest I'm really quite dreadfully nervous.

Oh ho ho she chortles, apple cheeked and jolly in a way I'm not entirely comfortable with. Everybody says that at first! But we'll soon have you whizzing round town like that chappy off the telly, what's his name .... moustache .... eyebrows....

Nigel Mansell, I say.

Nigel Mansell, she agrees.

There is a short silence.

Let me tell you a story about my father, I say. I am very much like my father.

At Christmas, my father likes to make the prawn cocktails. He doesn't cook at any other time and even at Christmas he's perfectly happy to leave my mother to handle anything that might involve peeling, mashing, roasting or giblets, but for some reason he is pleased and proud to consider himself the finest combiner of prawns and fluorescent pink sauce within the boundaries of Shepway district council and so while my mother cooks and I eat Twiglets, this is my father's job.

Two Christmases ago he made the prawn cocktails as usual and put them on the top shelf of the fridge to cool. With a curious nod to 1970s aesthetics, both my parents are in firm agreement that anything tastes better eaten out of cut glass or crystal and so these prawn cocktails were afforded the luxury housing of my mother's best wine glasses, a wedding present from an uncle who then left his wife to run off to 'the colonies' with a barmaid from the local British Legion in 1984 and was never mentioned again. Thirty seconds after closing the fridge door he remembers something he needs, yanks open the door again and topples a wine glass from the top shelf which plummets downwards and smashes on his forehead.

There is noise, there is swearing, there is Marie Rose sauce on the dog. When twenty minutes of mopping and baleful looks are over, my father makes a replacement cocktail and puts it in the fridge in place of its dear fallen comrade. This time the door is barely closed before he has to open it again and yes, yes, I am getting to the point. The replacement prawn cocktail goes the way of its brother and ends its life splattered along with thousands of tiny shards of glass all over my father and I spend the next half an hour hiding from the shrieking in the living room, biting the sofa cushions and weeping with mirth.

I am my father, I say. These cars, parked silent and unassuming all around us, are crystal goblets.

There is a long silence.

Why don't we start with checking the tyres, she says. On the outside of the car.