It’s that time of year again for me. MOT and Road Tax month. Grrrr! I am now over £500 lighter after the experience. I paid my road tax yesterday ; £177!!!! Whether you drive a child-killing tank-sized gas-guzzler or a china tea-cup on wheels, it’s the same amount. Unbelievable. The real traumatic aspect has now gone though (as if parting with nearly £200 wasn’t trauma enough). Now that you can pay for your tax online, you don’t need to rip your house apart looking for an insurance certificate you got through the post God knows when.

Of course no-one told me this, and I ripped my house apart anyway and successfully found the certificates for 2002-2003, 2003-2004, 2004-2005 and 2005-2006. The certificate for 2006-2007 must be in the vortex with my car keys, every biro I’ve ever owned, marriage certificate, mobile phone and driver’s licence. I even missed the last episode of “Shameless” because I was upstairs peeling back the wallpaper like Gene Hackman in “The Conversation” looking for the elusive bug ‘cept I was looking for my insurance cert and he wasn’t inventing new swear words like I was.

After all that, I began to doubt I actually was insured. Had I made that call in May? Had I been driving illegally for the past 8 months? So a quick call to the Institutional Embezellers they call Direct Line confirmed that not only was my insurance intact, but since everything is computerised now all I had to do was pay for my tax online and my MOT and insurance would be automatically checked. A couple of clicks, a brief moment of anxiety until the credit card was accepted, and voila! I would be issued with my new disc in a couple of days.Hallelujah! The DVLA finally makes it into the 21st Century! No more going to the local Post Office with all your documents to be told that they don’t do tax discs in that post office and you’ll have to go to one in town to get it. No more going into town to stand in a mammoth queue in the St Nicholas Centre Post Office for 40 minutes at the end of which an unsmiling (yet smug) apparatchik tells you that you haven’t brought the right documents and they can’t give you a disc no matter how much you plead. No more returning to your car to peel off a penalty notice that you have secured due to the fact that your tax is now overdue. Road tax has up until this point been mainly a Kafkaesque experience, except not as nearly good fun.

However, unlike Josef K (or maybe just like Josef K- if you subscribe to the theory that the Kafka hero is responsible for his own downfall, by his mere existence …) this is all my own fault as I notorious for losing everything. Everything, that is, that is really important. I don’t know where my birth certificate is for example. It’s probably in Afghanistan being used to facilitate illegal passports for the Taliban, for all I know. I can only apologise to anyone that bears the brunt of any terrorist acts that result from my absent mindedness. Mea Culpa. See you in Guantanamo. I’ll be the one trying to accessorize my orange jumpsuit.

It was a relief to me on the birth of my first born, King Louis, that I didn’t leave him in a car park or sitting in his Rock-A Tot carry seat on top of my car roof as I drove along, oblivious. As the MOST important thing in my life from the point of 10.32pm on 3rd May 1998, it was surely only a matter of time before I mislaid him. But you’ll be relieved to know he’s lolling about in front of the TV as I write, at the ripe old age of 8, giving me monosyllabic answers to any question I might deign to ask him.

To date, I may have shouted some angry things at both my kids but you can be sure I’ve never tempted Fate with the phrase, “Get lost!!!”. Far too risky.

It’s that time of year again for me. MOT and Road Tax month. Grrrr! I am now over £500 lighter after the experience. I paid my road tax yesterday ; £177!!!! Whether you drive a child-killing tank-sized gas-guzzler or a china tea-cup on wheels, it’s the same amount. Unbelievable. The real traumatic aspect has now gone though (as if parting with nearly £200 wasn’t trauma enough). Now that you can pay for your tax online, you don’t need to rip your house apart looking for an insurance certificate you got through the post God knows when.

Of course no-one told me this, and I ripped my house apart anyway and successfully found the certificates for 2002-2003, 2003-2004, 2004-2005 and 2005-2006. The certificate for 2006-2007 must be in the vortex with my car keys, every biro I’ve ever owned, marriage certificate, mobile phone and driver’s licence. I even missed the last episode of “Shameless” because I was upstairs peeling back the wallpaper like Gene Hackman in “The Conversation” looking for the elusive bug ‘cept I was looking for my insurance cert and he wasn’t inventing new swear words like I was.

After all that, I began to doubt I actually was insured. Had I made that call in May? Had I been driving illegally for the past 8 months? So a quick call to the Institutional Embezellers they call Direct Line confirmed that not only was my insurance intact, but since everything is computerised now all I had to do was pay for my tax online and my MOT and insurance would be automatically checked. A couple of clicks, a brief moment of anxiety until the credit card was accepted, and voila! I would be issued with my new disc in a couple of days.Hallelujah! The DVLA finally makes it into the 21st Century! No more going to the local Post Office with all your documents to be told that they don’t do tax discs in that post office and you’ll have to go to one in town to get it. No more going into town to stand in a mammoth queue in the St Nicholas Centre Post Office for 40 minutes at the end of which an unsmiling (yet smug) apparatchik tells you that you haven’t brought the right documents and they can’t give you a disc no matter how much you plead. No more returning to your car to peel off a penalty notice that you have secured due to the fact that your tax is now overdue. Road tax has up until this point been mainly a Kafkaesque experience, except not as nearly good fun.

However, unlike Josef K (or maybe just like Josef K- if you subscribe to the theory that the Kafka hero is responsible for his own downfall, by his mere existence …) this is all my own fault as I notorious for losing everything. Everything, that is, that is really important. I don’t know where my birth certificate is for example. It’s probably in Afghanistan being used to facilitate illegal passports for the Taliban, for all I know. I can only apologise to anyone that bears the brunt of any terrorist acts that result from my absent mindedness. Mea Culpa. See you in Guantanamo. I’ll be the one trying to accessorize my orange jumpsuit.

It was a relief to me on the birth of my first born, King Louis, that I didn’t leave him in a car park or sitting in his Rock-A Tot carry seat on top of my car roof as I drove along, oblivious. As the MOST important thing in my life from the point of 10.32pm on 3rd May 1998, it was surely only a matter of time before I mislaid him. But you’ll be relieved to know he’s lolling about in front of the TV as I write, at the ripe old age of 8, giving me monosyllabic answers to any question I might deign to ask him.

To date, I may have shouted some angry things at both my kids but you can be sure I’ve never tempted Fate with the phrase, “Get lost!!!”. Far too risky.