not sure what the protocol is, do i start new topic or add to someone else but here goes.
my original career choice went south many years ago and have spent most of my time since then doing various low paid unskilled jobs. have had my eye on hgv for a while but decided to finally take the plunge. unfortnatly the days are long gone when you could have lessons in an artic and get your car licence at the same time. not qualified to answer whether there has been any improvement in driver skill/road safety as a consequence of all the changes since them.
first step have a medical. not too difficult (i thought), hand over the money and have gp fill out a form. turns out the gp missed a few classes at med school (i probably should not have told him that) as he wasn’t able/qualified to do the optics. probably shouldn’t have asked him for a partial refund either. after an altercation with the old girl behind reception with me trying to get a £20 refund due to the gp not honouring his side of the contract, i left with nothing, apart from threats to have me removed from the surgerys register. was a police car parked outside just to make a point i told em what had happened. they seemed sympathetic. no money back though. 
so off to opticians thinking i could get someone to fill it out for free. eye test later (which was free due to a deal going on) i found out that i need glasses to meet the “stringent” eye sight requirements. i disputed this as anyone would. went away and checked it out for myself. turns out i need glasses to meet the “stringent” eye sight requirements. now i could hardly go back to the same optician having questioned there judgement and knowledge of the hgv eyesight requiremtns so i went to another optician and had another test which wasn’t free. should’ve asked my mum to pop into the first one and get my prescription 
. hindsight is a good thing. as i suspected i needed glasses to meet requirments. Not that she knew that. In fact she didn’t. I showed her the form. Yes i do need them she says in amazement. that will be £5 to enter the numbers into the boxes and sign it for you. is that on top of the eye test? yes. if i buy a pair of glasses in here can you waive the eye test and the £5? not really. £146.88 out of pocket by this time plus the £100 for the gp.
i know i should have read “BEFORE you book your training, READ THIS…”, but that would have been difficult as i hadn’t seen it before i decided to go down this path. in fact i did a bit of market research and asked a couple of drivers what they thought of the job and one of them - the nice one - mentioned this website worth checking out.
Driver 1: ■■■■ job.
Driver 2: some days are okay…[he went on a bit, might have had someting to do with me helping him move some boxes. i’ve moved boxes before.]
Driver 3: are you taking the ■■■■. no just asking you a question mate. ■■■■■■■■ anyway thats a 7.5t isn’t it you got that on a car licence. what did you say you ■■■■■ [i legged it i’m not embarassed to say. didn’t need to as he was quite large. it was a 7.5t though].
driver 2 was the nice one by the way.
i’ve already dropped £250 so i thought i might as well finish what i started.
sent off for licence. no problems there.
booked the multiple choice and hazard test. then order the hgv manual from amazon. i know many of you would have got the book and then booked the tests. rookie ■■■■ i suppose. but i wern’t to bothered as i had a couple of weeks for multiple choice and nothing much i could do with the hazard. got to the test centre and - ■■■■ - it was the multiple choice test. apart from flciking thorugh a pdf on drivers hours i had no preparation. to my surprise i got the pass letter with 92. now that is:
A) a ■■■■ easy test
B) i am real good a tests (i am actually)
C) i made some good guesses (as well as some obvious ones red=emergency, duh. If it was auxiliary line i would have guessed blue by the way.)
D) i’m a lucky ■■■■
PICK ANY FOUR OF THE ABOVE
book turned up albeit a bit late for its main purpose. had a flick thorugh and shocked by the long list of skills that i will need to gain. i half expected to see the ability to talk in tongues and drive out demons. the day came for the hazard. i’m pretty sure i spotted the hazards in all of them but just barely got a pass mark. not my kind of test clearly. right or wrong is a test, not some abritrary moment where a programmer has decided where you have to push the mouse button to get the points. anyway job done.
looks like i’ll need to prepare a bit better for the other theory test 
.
i’ll keep you informed as to my progress if that’s alright? any advice appreciated.
