My daughter read this blog for the first time today and said, "Tell them about doing the car tax disc". And she's right. It's so fashionable to berate computer systems but with the DVLA website it's almost a pleasure to hand over the cash.
Especially if you can cast your mind back as far as I can. Standing in a long queue at an office in central Bradford, nervously checking that I'd brought the Certificate of Insurance and not the policy, fingering the dirty cardboard folder that represented the Log Book for my elderly BSA Bantam, shuffling forward a little and trying to imagine a reason why my application would be turned down.
Yes I'm well aware of all those Big Brother warnings but reducing this particular ritual to a two or three minute communion with the computer is possibly worth the sacrifice of a certain amount of personal privacy.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Where there's muck there's mind expansion
DERBLUH-VAY-SAY. Part One. Maintaining an oldish house in France is a good way of expanding your French vocabulary. I spent much time discussing things with the menuisier (rather grander than a carpenter), the macon (builder), the plombier, the zingueur (roofs), Société Générale des Eaux (water), EDF (electricity) and Trésor Publique (local taxes). None of it in English.
However, the most demanding exchange occurred when the mayor needed to explain the future to me. Ironically he was the only person in the village who had ever said anything to me in English. Encountering my brother and I moving an unwanted French AGA-type stove from the house to the garage, he asked, “How may I help you?” The question was rhetorical. He had no intention of sharing our quarter-tonne burden.
And English was off the agenda at the Mairie. We were about to see our fosse septique replaced by a connection to the new système d’assainissement d’eau; in short the unloved, concrete-lined cavity underneath the bathroom floor would be filled with sand and our lav would go online. Now there is much I do not know about sewage so all this would have been a sweat in any language. But after a barrage of technicalities I began to recognise that cash rather than plumbing was the real subject to hand.
“It’s going to cost two thousand pounds,” I told my wife afterwards, “but they say this is a heavily subsidised figure.”
“Pay it, whatever it costs,” said my wife with undisguised passion.
And the reasons for her passion will be covered in Part Two
However, the most demanding exchange occurred when the mayor needed to explain the future to me. Ironically he was the only person in the village who had ever said anything to me in English. Encountering my brother and I moving an unwanted French AGA-type stove from the house to the garage, he asked, “How may I help you?” The question was rhetorical. He had no intention of sharing our quarter-tonne burden.
And English was off the agenda at the Mairie. We were about to see our fosse septique replaced by a connection to the new système d’assainissement d’eau; in short the unloved, concrete-lined cavity underneath the bathroom floor would be filled with sand and our lav would go online. Now there is much I do not know about sewage so all this would have been a sweat in any language. But after a barrage of technicalities I began to recognise that cash rather than plumbing was the real subject to hand.
“It’s going to cost two thousand pounds,” I told my wife afterwards, “but they say this is a heavily subsidised figure.”
“Pay it, whatever it costs,” said my wife with undisguised passion.
And the reasons for her passion will be covered in Part Two
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