Total Recall

When I met my mate to play squash earlier in the week he had an old racquet with him. He'd gone to the gym that weekend, at the same sports centre where we played squash, and absentmindedly took his squash racquet with him. After his gym session he, of course, left the centre without his racquet.

He was surprised to find that someone had handed it in, but that joy was tempered by the thought that he was having more and more "senior moments".  It was made worse when he discovered that he'd forgotten to pack his cuff links.

I thought "Poor man, he'll be forgetting where he lives soon."

It's that time of year when the car needs to be taxed. I'd received a reminder from the DVLA and as usual I logged on to their site to renew my tax on line. It's a really painless process. You key in the reference number they provide in the reminder and that brings up your car reg etc. If that's o.k. you click thro' to renew.

Except this time I was told there was no matching valid MoT certificate. Must be some mistake, I thought so I went through the process again - after all they were testing a Beta service upgrade. Nope, no MoT.

Not a problem, the certificate would be with my papers. I'm very particular about keeping everything up to date and tidy. I found every MoT cert. from when I bought the car 5 years ago, but no current one. As I was going through the car's log book I turned up the invoice for its last annual service. It would be due quite soon, after the MoT renewal.

It was dated March 2013. I had completely forgotten to have the car serviced, thinking it was due some 6 months later.

I'd been driving without a valid MoT, in an unserviced car - I was one of those ruffins of the road I keep going on about. You know the sort, feckless cheapskates who, for saving a few pounds, don't bother to keep their car taxed, insured, MoT'd and serviced.

I dashed round to the garage which I thought had MoT'd my car last year. "If DVLA say you ain't got a MoT cert. you ain't got one." "But I need one!" I muttered. "Can I bring my car in on Monday for an MoT, I need the car over the weekend. And a full service since I appear to have forgotten to have the car looked at in March." "You ain't got an MoT cert. so you can't drive the car" my garage owner helpfully pointed out. "Bring the car in and we'll do the MoT and service tomorrow."

"Thank you, oh so thank you", I mouthed as I kissed his oil smeared boots and wiped the sweat from his treasured brow.

All this will now have completely thrown out of kilter my carefully scheduled cash flow, with an unexpected MoT fee and annual service bill, not to mention that bloody iniquitous road tax.

Now where did I file away the Coidan's household budget spreadsheet. I didn't absentmindedly delete it did I?