My name is Amy and I can't drive

I’m sighing loudly and crossing my legs as yet another service station shrinks into the distance behind us, and my other half is staring pointedly forward, mouth set. This is a sensible direction to stare given he’s driving us up the M1, but I know his grimace is also because he’s gearing up to utter the full stop to all of our motorway conversations. Which goes something like this: “When you drive, as many loo breaks as you desire. Until then...”

I could have been motoring to toilet freedom, to unlimited possibility, to the shops, for 11 years now. I got as far as collecting the provisional license form on my 17^th birthday, and left it in the pub. My name is Amy. I’m 28, and I can’t drive. I’d ask for a group hug, but I think I might be the only one.

How has this happened? At 17, living at home, I was happy to cope with one bus an hour if it meant I could use the lesson fee for more pressing matters - like booze to drink in club queues while waiting to get turned away for looking 12. At university, I was predictably skint and then I picked up the boy, moved to London and took the tube every day. I cope.

But now and then, while arranging festival travel with friends, or knocking over small children on the bus with my Tesco bags, suspecting a Fiat-driving youth is preparing to shout, “Bus stop w****r!” I get a twinge that I haven’t quite caught up. I'm drifting towards the rest of adulthood with a mortgage, a fiancé, a loosely termed 'career', but I am still at the mercy of unreliable public transport and expensive taxis.

If nothing else, it loses me valuable argument ground. Much in the way I whine, “You don’t understand!” to non-smokers who tut at my on-off habit, my non-driving status means I’m unable to comment on anyone’s skill or lack of. Even I know you shouldn’t sit in the middle lane assuming it’s the ‘medium’ between fast and inside, but, y’know, they’re giving me a lift.

Given I refuse to wash our heavy casserole dish as it’s “too awkward”, it’s fair to say I am scared of things that are a bit hard. Ever contrary though, things that are really hard, I seem to throw myself at with abandon. Terrified, I quit a job I hated giving myself a month to find something else, and it worked. I ended a long term relationship and jumped into a new one a week later, and that worked too. Apparently, I am a girl of extremes. I can throw a steady income down the drain, but I cannot scrub an iron pan.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to imagine myself behind the wheel as time passes, and every journey with the boy carries an unspoken accusation of laziness. But much like the giving up smoking thing, and the pile of washing up, I continually bleat, ‘I will at some point, honest!’ Erm, but not now - we have a wedding to save for. That would just be silly.

I got back tonight, and I couldn't find any Friends

I'll start with a disclaimer, nay, a warning. If you do not like long-running, award-winning, jolly American sitcom Friends or have not ever watched it, this blog post may not have much in it for you. This blog is not going to be earthshattering, important, or even well written. It's just about Friends.

Screw the journo thing of doing a pithy bit of context for the uninitiated. Friends has been on one channel or another four times a day your entire life. If you ain't a fan now, I can't change you. And even if I could, I probably wouldn't because quite frankly, we number many and we're just fine. 

Plus there's just too damned much to explain. I can say "In LONDON!" incredulously whenever I want, and the boy, the best friend and occasionally the mother (if she's taken her clarity meds) will understand the reference. Sometimes just saying any word in the same tone as "In LONDON!" works. This post may run along those lines. You might think something like, "Oh, I didn't realise the irritating precocious child actor talking to Joey in Chandler and Monica's new house was Dakota Fanning" and that's okay. Saying, "Oh, was Brad Pitt in it once then?" means you should probably stop reading now. 

So let's crack on. I am sad Friends will no longer be on free telly at a time when nothing much else is on. That when I leave work or work-related things before 10pm, there is no longer a back-up to stick on in the background as I throw myself on the sofa and force the boy to make dinner. I am sad that it will no longer be the main reason I would ever watch T4 and thus pretend to be young and hip. So I'm just going to talk it out for a bit, okay?