Thursday 4 October 2007

Computer Says No...

There is one thing that no-one tells you about starting a wildlife garden---that it will bring out inner resources that you never knew you had. I would never previously have believed that I could get up, calmly clean a mountain of cat sick from my quilt cover, remove a frog suspended from the cat flap (how? you ask yourself), and return to bed with a large cup of coffee all before 7.00 a.m. How was this possible? Well, I received a consignment of seeds yesterday, and I'm still dribbling copiously over their contents (not literally, of course, it is necessary to keep seeds DRY). Next year is going to be wonderful! Actually the week has been irritating in its own way. I've been trying to change the address on my drivers' license. This used to be a simple affair---one simply filled in the new address on the back of the old license and sent the whole thing to the license agency in Wales. Now you have to supply a photo and a whole mass of paperwork. But wait, I hear you say, you can do it all online! That's what I discovered too, so I spent nearly an hour putting my information, including all my passport details, onto their website. Page after page after page...then right after I pressed the final button, it told me that it could not process the photo from my passport and I was going to have to fill in the forms and send them in with a fresh photo anyway. The other thing that got on my wick was the health page. You had to check categories of 'serious health problem' that you had suffered from since being given your license. Well, two years ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar 2, for which I take medication, but which I myself do not consider serious. So, the first time round, I didn't check anything. Then I received a warning that if I didn't declare any problems I could face two years in jail! I quickly went back to the original page and checked the 'serious mental illness' category, feeling like the mad woman in the attic. I went back and forth several times, actually, wondering if I should check anything else. For instance, I once got highly queasy in Boots---a reaction, I thought, to the garish Christmas decorations. Perhaps I had undiagnosed epilepsy? At one point I'd checked four categories (one of the symptoms of bipolar 2, incidently, is hypochondria, but this wasn't on the form...). Anyway, in the end I came clean---only to find that this will slow my application for the license even further as it has to be processed through the medical department and my doctor contacted for further information. This doesn't look good, as I've teased this man mercilessly about his inability to prescribe the right HRT treatment for me and the silliness of his own computer...So we'll have to wait, as they say. Does anyone else out there have any information on this? Do they take your driving license away if you are only slightly crazy (and only during the winter months!) as I am? If so, I'll fight to the last....

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