A speed awareness course on Zoom! You couldn't make it up | Steve Canavan

Her words on my arrival were: ‘Oh Steven, are you not going to do something about that scraggly mess on your chin? It looks stupid.’

‘Happy birthday mum,’ I replied, ‘I’m glad I drove 50 miles to spend it with you.’

Bickering aside, we had a pleasant socially-distanced few hours before we were ordered to leave because my mother had online bridge with Mary and Paul and nothing comes between my mother and bridge.

If I were to befall a terrible accident and, say, lose three limbs, I get the feeling if my mum were told about it between 3pm and 4.30pm, she’d say, ‘that’s awful but can I get back to you in half an hour – I’m just making my opening bid’.

A couple of weeks later I received a pleasant letter from the police telling me I had been caught speeding and would be fined £100 and three points put on my licence. This was a blow because I’m not a rich man. It was also annoying as this had occurred on literally the only journey I made during lockdown.

Anyway, fair cop, I was doing 47 in a 40 zone, but was offered – as an alternative to a fine and points – a speed awareness course. This was appealing because I was keen to learn about the dangers of driving and to brush up on the laws of the road – oh, and it was only 80 quid and no points.

So, earlier this week I had to log on to something called Zoom (which I’d hoped might be a lolly but was an app) and spend two-and-a-half hours with a jolly but slightly threatening chap who talked to me and seven others about the laws of the road.

It was quite useful. I never knew that any road with street lights has a 30mph limit unless otherwise stated, and the difference in the number of fatalities among people hit by a car at 30 and at 50 is genuinely shocking. But the best thing about it was being able to look inside the homes of seven other people.

These were folk like me who had been caught speeding but whereas my camera was set up so the background was the bedroom wall, others had their cameras in much more interesting positions.

There was Carole, who in her kitchen had a cage that contained a dog about the size of an elephant and which, at intervals, went berserk and began barking and clawing at the bars as if eager to eat her. When warned people can be expelled from the course, the woman hurriedly moved to a different part of her house.