License my licence…

CHRIS BENNETT has spent a little time in the past.

I RECENTLY had one of those defining moments. Now I realise you are quite likely to ask, “What defining moments?”; and with good cause.

As the decade and a half since 1995 has unfolded, revealing to me the extraordinary genius of man’s ability to develop his most impressive invention, the computer, I have had a fair amount of fun keeping up with things. Well, I like to think of it as keeping up, anyway. My friend Shane thinks I am stuck somewhere between Guthenburg and the Imperial typewriter. He has a point

Personally, of course, I believe I have done quite well with the ups and downs of modern information technology. I use the internet every day, sometime for several hours a day, and I do my banking electronically.

My smart phone does everything a PA could possibly do, and it lets me play Freecell; and email is something that happens about four times a day.

I pay my accounts using EFT (electronic fund transfer) be they SANLAM, Standard Bank or the chemist on the corner, among the many.

However (and there is always ‘however’) there is a curious exception to the rule. My car licence.

Now in the old days, that is to say five years ago and backwards, I simply made out a cheque (remember cheques?) and put it, with the licensing form, in the envelope. I then licked a stamp (remember stamps?), stuck it on the envelope and all would be dropped in the slot of a conveniently sited post-box.

As I stood waiting my turn at the dingy little hall where one pays the licenses (lots of typewritten notices stuck all over the glass windows and off-beige walls, not one of them straight) I became absorbed in the harrowing tale of the woman at the counter (whose husband had apparently sold his trailer without insisting on it’s being reregistered, and the corresponding lofty indifference of the lady behind the glass. For some reason I was reminded of the Walrus and the Carpenter, and all the poor little oysters.

But enough already.

My turn arrived and I gave the clerk my money and the form. When she handed me my change I asked why I could not pay my licence by EFT. Her eyes momentarily glazed; she then said, “You can pay electronically at Port Shepstone.”

I took my handkerchief and felt another wave of oyster sadness sweep over me. I wondered, only momentarily, mind you, if I were moving gracelessly from senility into some sort of soft-furnished madness.

I resisted the temptation to explain that I wanted to pay it without having to get my car out and drive either to the post office or to the council office. I wanted to pay it, as they used to say in the adverts, from the comfort of my own home.

I accepted my defeat with good grace; which is more than can be said for R. Mugabe; G. Brown and A.J. Balfour, politicians all.