by Mary Price (09 Jul 01)

Have you ever, while in the front passenger seat on a fast motorway trip, glanced across to your right and thought for a moment you were in a driverless car dicing past the lines of trucks and keeping that annoying Audi behind? An off-putting sensation, I can tell you.

It happens to me, from time to time, thanks to the boss man's idiotic driving position. He sits so close to the wheel that he has to recline his seat back to an almost horizontal position, in order to get his arms stretched out properly. When I ask him what's the advantage of sitting like a gorilla driving a go-kart, he goes into a garbled explanation which involves references to some ancient Grand Prix driver he's seen in photographs, and the necessity to leave the rear-seat passenger sitting behind him with plenty of foot-room.

I could reply to the effect that he should leave ancient race-driving styles to ancient race drivers. Aren't these people long since dead, anyway? And what's the point of leaving foot-room for a rear-seat passenger - whom we almost never carry - when his own seat's so far reclined that the back of his neck would be in the poor devil's lap?

I could reply to that effect, but it's never done any good in the past. Now I simply say, cutting him off in full illogical flow: "Just watch the road!" He always goes silent when huffed.

But what happens when he drives his own car is nothing compared with the pantomime when I unwisely let him drive mine.

It will not come as a surprise to you that my own position at the wheel is a great deal more elegant than that of a gorilla on a go-kart. It does not, therefore and by definition, suit the boss man. You'd think he'd have realised this by now, but every time he drives my car it comes as a complete surprise.

Into The Old Routine

At least, he starts off with the seat in the position in which I left it. As soon as we're out of the 30 limit, at much the same time as he slips down to third gear and starts bombing off to pass the slow-coaches ahead, he notices something's wrong, and starts fiddling with the seat adjustment.

Forward a bit. Forward a bit more. Fidget. Recline ten degrees. Change up to fourth. Back a bit. Fidget. Recline five degrees more. Swerve round the car ahead which has been obviously slowing for a left turn, but which he hasn't noticed because he's been leaning forward in his seat fiddling with the recline control. Up to fifth. Forward a bit more. "Oh look!" (turning round to watch some to-me perfectly ordinary old car going the other way) "A 1956 Jaguar XK140!" Turn back to face our direction of travel. Recline ten degrees more. Fidget. Reverse last recline adjustment.

Eventually I scream at him, "Why can't you do all this fidgeting and fumbling and ******ing around before we leave the house?"

Severe huff, accompanied by hurt look and pained silence.

The ghastly thing, the unspeakable, the utterly maddening thing is, I know what's about to happen next.

He is now sitting comfortably, reclined to an almost mummy-like position. Out of the corner of my own, I am aware of his eyes flickering across to each door mirror in turn. He has noticed that all he sees in the mirrors is sky, tree-tops, or the third storey of some houses we've just passed.

His hand steals, not unobtrusively enough, to the mirror adjustment control . . .

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