Newslink April marketing special

Area News
An ADI on holiday...
is still an ADI
Brian
Thomson
MSA GB Scotland
It’s been 20 years this year since I became an
ADI, and with that became self-employed.
Working for yourself has it’s ups and downs,
as we all know. There’s the chance to work
your own hours, a plus; doing all your own
admin, a minus; not getting paid for downtime
or illness, a minus; taking your unpaid holidays
when you like, a plus.
That takes me seamlessly onto my topic for
this issue of Newslink– I managed to do that
thing we all say we’ll do, but rarely get round
to, which is take a quick break for some much
needed R and R. At the end of January I took in
a bit of sun, sea and strolling about in Gran
Canaria. Temperatures at that time of year are
a nice 25-27’C during the day.
But as well as know, a driving instructor on
holiday is still a driving instructor, so after a
quick word with some of the hotel reception
staff, I found myself outside a local driving
school office. However, what the receptionist
omitted to tell me was that in Gran Canaria,
unlike the UK, they shut between 1pm and
4pm!
So it was a return trip the following day to
meet Selvia, who arranged lesson bookings
and theory classroom sessions. The school
had its own classroom equipped with various
models of working parts of a car that, in olden
days, had been used as hands-on training
material. I also met one of the instructors who
was coming in to pick up two students at the
same time. They go out for a lesson together,
one driving and the other taking notes or at
least paying attention, before they swap over
and the second lesson commences.
They sometime have three students in the
car at once.
The lessons at that school were 31 euros
for a 45-minute lesson, roughly equivalent to
£37.50 for a one hour lesson here. Fuel was
slightly cheaper, around £1.20 for petrol and
£1.31 for diesel. So with the ‘busman’s holiday’
information gathered, off I set to see what
other subtle differences I would come across.
Electric scooters are really common on the
island and look as though they are used by all
walks of life. Indeed they seem to be
considered a main form of transport around
town, and even used on urban dual
carriageways (didn’t personally see any on the
main motorways!). The ones I saw were
always ridden on the road and not the
pavements.
Another ‘anomaly’ was some parking; there
40 NEWSLINK n APRIL 2024