Slipping off the pace (but not necessarily quietly!) …
My latest dispatch from the front line of the battle between “how thing used to be” (sensible, straightforward, logical and – albeit not perhaps not necessarily fair – at least always transparent and understandable) and the complete illogicality as to how the world works in the 21st Century is not a happy one and takes in more than just my recent driving disqualification.
That said, I begin once again with the ongoing “authorities gone mad” complications of my driving ban.
Recently I received written confirmation from the court concerned that the verdict on my case was that I had received a 6 month disqualification from driving and would I please send my licence off in the SAE provided – which I did.
I then emailed them, very politely, acknowledging receipt of their letter but requesting confirmation of the date upon which my disqualification began (largely so that I could place the date upon which it would end in my diary for 2022).
Back came the response, providing me via a standardised format data with not only the start and end dates of my disqualification but also a list of how the total fine also imposed upon me was made up.
Two problems with the above.
Firstly, about a month before receiving the verdict on my case I had received communications from both the prosecution and the court explaining how things would work – I could either plead “not guilty”, in which even the court would set a date for a trial, or I could plead “guilty”, in which case I could choose whether to submit mitigation or not – and how that would all work was explained.
Also included was a statement that under no circumstances was I to drive beyond a certain (given) date.
Which I didn’t. I even rang my car insurance people, explained what was happening and arranged to cancel my insurance at midnight on the day before it.
Now, however – I kid Rusters not – I discover that my disqualification actually began only a week later (i.e. the date upon which the written confirmation of it that I received was issued).
I am now about to embark upon a project to complain about and challenge this.
I was informed by both prosecution and court separately that I was not to drive from a set given date – I didn’t – and yet the disqualification they’ve meted out to me begins a week later.
The swine have diddled me out of a week’s driving! I’m not taking this lying down – tomorrow I shall be composing a strident letter to Boris demanding that he personally sort this disgraceful ill-treatment of a British citizen immediately.
Separately, for reasons that are unimportant to this bulletin, I have begin spending half my week in a location where the only computer available to me is an Apple Mac Air.
I have been an Microsoft/PC man for the past thirty-five years and the one thing you can say about PCs is that their systems – admittedly frustrating at times when they won’t do what you want them to – are at least logical.
In comparison the world of Apple systems – in which everything is done differently almost by definition (there is little in common between Apple and Android smartphones, for example) is completely unfathomable and largely seems devised in the style suggested by someone when they said: “If you put 100 monkeys in a room with a typewriter long enough eventually one day you’ll get Hamlet …”
Let me give you a couple of examples.
When I go to the inbox of my main email account on a PC there may be ten emails waiting for me. Eight of them are junk or of no interest to me so my habitual first action is, by moving the arrow of my mouse, to “click” on each of the offending eight [which cumulatively “highlight” themselves], then press “delete” and hey presto they disappear, leaving me with just the two emails I intend to read and/or reply to.
On an Apple computer you cannot do that. On an Apple computer you can only delete one email at a time. Not only that, you cannot go to an email, click on it and thereby delete it. You have to begin clicking on it until (after 20 or 30 attempts) it gives you an option to “do something with it”.
Yesterday I went to see someone proficient in Apple technology in order to ask why.
He simply told me that on an Apple laptop (where the mouse arrow is moved by sliding your finger across a pad below the keyboard), if you want to “do any action “ (e.g. delete an email), instead of moving one finger across the pad … you have to use two at the same time!
Well, when you begin working for the first time on an Apple computer, nothing and nobody jolly well tells you that!!!!!!!!
Thank you very much indeed – Steve Jobs and his successors at Apple Corps!
Lastly and to finish today, last night I attempted to purchase a Senior Railcard to use on my smartphone, something that I had been told was a good wheeze because it would make travelling by train – as I will be having to do for the next six months – a complete piece of cake.
After last night’s two hour effort, not for a while it won’t!
Soon after beginning my attempt I was asked for my Railcard password. I couldn’t remember it, so had to register that and request a “change your password” facility to be sent to my email address.
By that means I created a new password – with great difficulty. First they wouldn’t accept my chosen one because it didn’t have enough “difficulty” – there had to be a capital letter, a number and a “special character” in it.
Having managed to get that far, thereafter I spent the best part of 90 minutes wrestling with the Railcard “system”.
First – despite at least ten repeated attempts by me – it refused to accept that the second (confirming) “repeat” of the new password (that I had tapped out into the second box provided for the purpose) matched the first one!
Then – in order to try and beat the system – I applied on four further different occasions to “re-set my password” … whereupon, on all four occasions, 
the same “sorry but your confirming version of your new password didn’t match your original one” message came up.
At about 10.00pm last night I gave up attempting to buy myself a Senior Railcard forever.
I’m just going to go to the kiosk at my departing station and buy my tickets from a human being.
