No more dads taxi...

At last, Amanda passed her driving test today - yippee !!!

I have to confess that whilst I was happy for her, and she was ecstatic, my first thought was "thank god I don't have to do the dads taxi thing now", for the last three years I've been on call at all hours of the night and early morning, in recent months its been a regular late night pickup from the restaurant where she works, Friday nights have always been a 1am pickup - and I like my bed at that sort of time.

It also means that I don't get to drink any beer in the house because I have to drive later on, not that I can drink a lot of beer, I can't, but even one bottle is out of the question on dads taxi nights.

But now - she can drive herself.

First thing I did was get on t'interweb and shop around for insurance for Suzannes car, its due for renewal this week anyway so Ieft it for today just in case. Yesterday with just me and Suzanne as drivers it would have cost us £202 fully comprehensive with legal cover too, today by adding Amanda onto the policy its just cost me £1090 and that was cheap, the next nearest price was over £2000.

A Ford Focus, 1600cc, fairly standard second family car, worth about £7000, and because she is a new driver and under 25 years of age then the insurance companies rub their hands with glee and even the ones that advertise "special deals for new young drivers" start their pricing schemes at £2000 - the bastards.

After booking the insurance and paying for it I got a call from the company to confirm everything and the woman asked me how long Amanda had held a licence, "about an hour now" I replied and there was a long pause while she tried to find that option on her computer screen, I think she glossed over that question eventually.

And the most stupid thing is that the insurance policy that I bought online was from Budget Insurance, who just happened to be our previous insurers too, yet when I rang them last week and asked about putting Amanda on the old policy they said that it wasn't possible as she was too young to be insured on a 1600cc car, seems like their office staff don't use the same software that their own internet site do.

So she's gone to work in the car tonight and I've sat down and had two cans of Tetleys to celebrate the tearing up of her "L" plates and the tearing up of my Dads Taxi franchise, it feels so liberating.