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Old driving instructors and lessons!!!

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Hi Echo nice to hear from you. Firstly I always thought Brian's name was Tingle not Tindall so I stand corrected ...just 49 years later. I can't for the life of me remember what car I had my lessons in. It may have even been my own car although I doubt it. He had a lot of patience I can tell you. He would be proud of me though as I even have a truck licence now . You must have been very impressive as a driver to be employed at such a young age.

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Hi Echo nice to hear from you. Firstly I always thought Brian's name was Tingle not Tindall so I stand corrected ...just 49 years later. I can't for the life of me remember what car I had my lessons in. It may have even been my own car although I doubt it. He had a lot of patience I can tell you. He would be proud of me though as I even have a truck licence now . You must have been very impressive as a driver to be employed at such a young age.

 

Hi Janet,

I'm sure Brian would be very proud to hear that you now possess a truck licence.

I've always been a confident driver but never reached the dizzy heights of large lorries. The nearest I came was two years ago when I jointly drove a 7.5 ton lorry to Italy and back to help my brother in law move his furniture. That experience gave me a lot of respect for the drivers of today's juggernauts..

Over my career I've also driven school mini buses full of pupils. On one occasion in the '80s I was visiting the Crucible and I tried to park in the multi-storey car park across from the theatre. To my alarm, due to the vehicle having a roof rack attached, I heard a scraping noise at the bottom of the entry ramp. Yes, you guessed it, the bus was marginally too high to get in. No significant damage was incurred: just my pride and I had to reverse gingerly back up the ramp. A kind traffic warden let me park the bus on double yellow lines in the layby on Arundel Gate.

Now being of an age when the DVLA only give you a licence for three years at a time I've reluctantly had to relinquish the D1 & C1 categories of vehicles on my licence as it's too much hassle to continue with them. So from now on I'll stick to cars and small vehicles.

 

echo.

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The reason I passed my test quickly with only minimum lessons was down to an old workmate now departed named Arthur Henderson,at 16 yrs I was a van lad at the Don Bakery Proctor Place!.Arthur was one of the salesman and he had the van lads learning to drive being groomed to be future salesman!,he had an unusual way of getting you to obey his instructions!.It was a long ruler which he rapped your knuckles on the steering wheel with every time you did a wrong procedere ,you soon got it right believe me!.We learned in 7ton Ford wagons with no syncro mesh so you had to double clutch,Arthur taught me how to change gear up and down the box without using the clutch just by getting the revs right and not grating the gears!.So going to BSM for lessons was a doddle after learning all that,his teaching method was unorthodox but it worked!.

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The driving school i used was green light on the cliff just passed Smiths,run by two brothers one the younger happy go luckey type,the older never seem to smile, one sunny saturday morning driving pass Wigfalls the young one who was my regular instructor said in a hurried voice to stop which i did ,i asked whats wrong and he said look at the legs on her,on my first lesson we went on woolywood rd,and he daid go on put your foot down and see what we can get out of it,no speed limit on the road them,think when they started to knock down the the cliff they moved to the Manor.

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Can't remember the name of my instructor but it was 'Mr' xxxxxxx, he lived on the corner house at junction of Wordsworth Avenue and Turie Avenue, I had lessons in a white Datsun Cherry if memory serves.

I remember he had a nice garden until a car crashed through his fence and wrecked his lawn and flowerbeds, don't know if it was a learner but thankfully it wasn't me.

In what I thought was an early stage of lessons he got me to drive up jawbone hill in the snow to give me practice in bad conditions, don't think many would do that today, we didn't make it and had to switch seats when we got stuck halfway up.

He called me a lucky pig when I passed first time but my test was around the roads where I live and apart from one stall and a crazy woman in the road near the Ritz it went fine.

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Intake school of motoring Keith smith top bloke! I passed in 1977 in a ford escort

Still see Keith out and about.

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Eric is my uncle, he is still alive and well, obviously long retired. He taught everyone in our family to drive including the odd boyfriend here and there. We all passed first time, he took personal pride in that. He was strict, old school, no nonsense.

I had 6 lessons with eric and passed first time,he would always say you can't smoke and drive.Lots of my mates learned with eric.

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er, sorry.

 

correction.

 

IS my dad. sorry, pops.

 

.. and now “was”........

 

To those of you on here that mentioned being taught to drive by Ted Wood, just a note to say he died on April 28th after a long period in and out of hospital.

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Wasn't there a test centre on Dodd St/Hammerton road, S6?

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Wasn't there a test centre on Dodd St/Hammerton road, S6?
Yes, on Dodd Street - I took my motorcycle test there in 1968.

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Yes, on Dodd Street - I took my motorcycle test there in 1968.

 

I thought so, that's where I took my car test (Triumph Herald) around 1970.

 

My motorcycle test a few years earlier was on Sitwell Road, Sharrow, a bit further on from the old bank.

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