The whole reason for the meeting was to bring safety awareness to all of us about driving. Well done to all the organisers, Transport for Greater Manchester, Stockport Council and to DriveSafe.

Hi its Steve Clifford
Wow what a day we had today. It is Thursday 6th September and today has been on the calander for some weeks.
When the Educate group were asked to go to this meeting we had no idea really what it was about, the only thing we knew was that it was something to do with driving and dementia, so we were really up for this,
At one of our monthly meetings earlier in the year one of the Doctors at the Meadows Hospital in Stockport had visited us as she introduced a brochure Stockport was about to publish on this very subject and wanted our views on this draft document,
So we turned up at Stockport county football ground this morning where we met about forty others from around the borough.
It soon became clear what the meeting was about as the two leaders of the session began to unveil and unroll their brilliant presentation.
The whole reason for the meeting was to bring safety awareness to all of us about driving and in order to do that all of us were asked to draw what a stop sign looked like, but before he went around the room asking what shape a stop sign was.
The answers he got were quite unbelievable from round, triangular and other shapes. I was the only one who got it one hundred percent right. Which is frightning when I was amongst only two people in the room living with dementia.
With that we wached a number of video clips taken from a car dash camera and we were asked to write down what hazards we saw.
It was extremely informative and very interesting.
What I did notice in the room, sat at the back around a table were about ten men who didnt seem to be taking part in the discussion we later learnt that all these men were driving instructors of the highest calibre, these men were the people who test other driving instructors so their knowledge of the highway code and driving in general was second to none.
It was as we were given lunch, and vey nice it was too, not just your curly edged sandwiches, it was a proper lunch, that we learnt what these men were here for, they were going to take us all out for a spin and assess how safe our driving was and for us to learn as much as possible.
My driver was one of the most qualified driving instructers I have ever met, Sohail.
I had given up my place to drive so that Margaret could drive the only automatic car in the pool, and that I must say was the best decisons I have made.
　
The reason is that Margaret passed her test first time twenty five years ago and since that day has never driven since and had she known what today was going to be she would never have gone.
So I persuaded her to take my place in the automatic car, she was reluctant at first but decided to give it a go.
She went with another Educate member Joan, and she and I are the only two members of the educate group still driving.
After returming to Stockport county ground I saw Margaret getting out of the car with the instructor.
She had a big smile on her face (which is unusual) (joke)
She told me she had had a great drive and intends now to have some block refresher driving courses to get her confidence back and all that is down to the expertise of the magnificent instructor.
This meeting was a phenominal success and we were told there may well be more,
I do hope so
So well done to all the organisers, to Transport for Greater Manchester, Stockport Council and to DriveSafe.