The other side of the job

If you had told me two years ago that I would be wondering around a strange City, looking for a strange pub and hoping to meet strange people I would have told you to stop being so silly!!

Ok so the City, the pub and the people aren't really strange, they are just strange to me.

Over the last few years a lot of Driving Instructors have started to use Facebook and, more specifically, to join Groups and forums related to the job.

There is now a fountain of knowledge and opinion available at the click of a mouse, although it is not ALWAYS helpful, but we have learnt to tell the good from the bad.

Other small groups have sprung up composed of Instructors who have similar beliefs or senses of humour and so a lot of us are members of about ten different Instructor groups.

Now...apart from this being great fun, informative and expressive, there are also arguments, cliques and major falling outs.  This can be like a soap opera so who needs to watch TV anymore?

So...

This weekend a group of Instructors from all over the country met in Southampton for a drink and pre-Xmas meal.   Some of us had met before and arranged to stay in the same hotel and share rooms to share costs but a few were Meet-up virgins.

We had great fun with much laughter and much drinking (those of us who weren't driving home).  We had talked so much on Facebook that we already knew a lot about each other so when we met it felt natural as everyone was exactly as expected.

This can, by its nature, be a lonely job so the social side has to be looked for and, once found, is so rewarding.

I don't think one of us talked about the job or the pupils but we all just met together to have a great fun time.

Roll on the next one....