Much to my surprise, having put in my passport application a week past Saturday, the cancelled one came back in Friday morning's post, and the replacement that evening by courier. Good service, if hardly cheap these days. I think it may have helped that the application form was one I'd filled in on line and had posted to me by the passport office. The first time I travelled abroad, back in 1966, I did so on a group passport. The trip was a schools exchange, supervised by a few teachers, so I only needed a little green identity card. The following year, I got the first of a number of those rather elegant old blue passports. In due course, that design was replaced by the uniform burgundy-coloured EU passport which, I have to admit, is rather handier, being more compact. That in turn has evolved into a version the photo on which can be compared with the face that presents itself at a camera at the port of entry. When we came through Gatwick a couple of months back, I was through the traditional queue-at-the-desk process rather faster than Martyn, who used the whizzo new scheme.
Another phenomenon of modern times is energy liberalisation. Forgive me if I assess the overall results as confusion, inefficiency and vastly increased consumer prices. It has also abolished a state-owned system that actually worked with a foreign-owned distribution operation that is at the mercy of an Arab cartel and Russian oligarchs. Our gas meter stopped providing readings other than intermittently a year or so ago. I reported the fact, and of course nothing happened. Our supplier asked us for readings a few weeks ago so I reported the elec reading and a string of zeroes for gas, receiving an automated thank-you as though all was in order. It was tempting to leave the ball in the court of our German supplier, but I called again to report the fault, and arranged for someone to come later today to replace the battery. So what happens this morning? Bing-bong: 'I've come to read your gas and electric meters'. [Anyone else noticed how 'electricity' has become an archaism?]
With all the rain of recent weeks, travelling has been somewhat entertaining. (A nod, of course, to the flooded residents of these parts, who I'm sure found the experience no more entertaining than I did in another place in 1999.) A lot of the country lanes on my usual route to the 'clubhouse' tend to flood in the winter, so I didn't even attempt it last week, using the fast and furious main road instead. Having become a rather timid driver in my declining years, I'm happier on quieter roads, and was glad to be able to use the lanes again yesterday morning, only having to slow once or twice to ford standing water. It was a pretty long day at the hobby, however, so it was dark when I left, and the lanes were full of Mummies driving their vast vehicles in the middle of the road. No right answer, obviously.
The day dawns fine, so I plan to do some hacking down of shrubs. Our fence man has put in a tolerable estimate, and will grub out such shrubs as we designate (hideous laurels and viburnums, bird-sown cotoneasters and the like), but some we'll cut back hard and aim to keep in check with annual pruning. It won't be long before we have bulbs in flower, and there are a few timid sparks of colour on the primroses. It's still far too soggy to do any gardening except for subjects that can be reached from the paths, but that still leaves a fair bit of work. Onward and upward.
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