I knew that the feeling of foreboding had nothing to do with any lack of confidence in her abilities and a lot to do with my own colourful driving history, which over the years has seen me on first-name terms with a number of panel beaters.

I didn't think it worth mentioning that it had taken me three goes to get my licence. I clearly recall bouncing along the road during one of these driving tests as if riding a pogo stick, the testing officer clinging to the roof lining of the car with one hand and the armrest with the other. At least while I had him like that he didn't have a free hand with which to scrawl "FAILED" across my licence application.

My father had bravely, if foolishly, begun to teach me to drive, these lessons ending abruptly when I tried to do a hill start. The engine roared and the family car took off like a bull at a rodeo. Dad's head snapped back, I clung to the steering wheel and the rear wheels spun, an expensive metallic groan audible over the screeching of the tyres. There was one final "clunk" and all forward motion ceased, due to the fact that most of the car's differential was now lying on the road. It was at this point that Dad decided that any funds expended on a driving school would be well spent.

I got a job, bought a car and took to the roads. Not long after, I was driving home one dark night and mistook Road B for Road A. This wouldn't have mattered if Road B had not terminated in a park. I approached this terminus at some speed, mounting the footpath and becoming airborne. The park was popular with homeless persons who would gather there to share a convivial flagon of rough red, and my headlights picked out just such a group as its members looked up to see a blue Holden Commodore flying through the air in their general direction. They scattered and I executed an imperfect landing nearby.

The old Commodore was never the same after that and I decided an 'el cheapo' sports car would be more in keeping with my carefully groomed image as a wanker. All went well until I had it tuned to make it go faster. This exercise was spectacularly successful and it went extremely fast in a straight line. It did not, however, go around corners any faster, as I discovered when I flew around a bend in the western suburbs and once more found myself airborne.

Having already perfected four-wheeled crash landings in the Commodore, I tried a different tack on this occasion, inverting the car in mid-air so it landed on its roof. Being a sports car, of course, it didn't have a roof. When it came to rest, I was upside down in the passenger compartment. That was the end of my sports car period, so I sold what was left of it and went overseas.

   "Are you planning to leave the country?" said the Amsterdam police officer.
   "No, sir," I replied, surveying the wrecked car from which I had just crawled and the several other wrecks that surrounded me.

Take it from me, driving on snow and ice is a lot trickier than it looks. As the police officer took my details and the other drivers whose cars I had destroyed went looking for a rope with which to lynch me, I remembered the airline ticket I fortuitously had purchased not an hour before. Promising to appear at the police station the next morning, I instead packed my bags and headed to Eastern Europe, Amsterdam suddenly having lost its appeal.

So I sat and waited while my future schoonzuster did the written test for her learner's permit.