Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today
I've been meaning to get my British drivers licence for a while now. I think the law over here is that if you've been here for more than 6 months you need to get a British licence. Further more, if you want to exchange an international licence for a British one, you have to do it within 5 years of arriving in the country.
As we always thought we weren't going to be here for a long time I always put off getting my licence exchanged because I figured we'd be heading back to NZ at some stage and I'd want my NZ licence again (the UK destroys your NZ licence when exchanging it, so you can't have both).
However as our 5 year anniversary of living in the UK is coming up and as we're planning on staying here for a while longer I thought I should get my licence changed over, I picked up the forms from the post office about 2 months ago. I filled in the form about 1 month ago, and last week went into the office to make the exchange with all my documents.
What I hadn't reckoned on was the fact that my first stamp on my UK Visa at the UK border was actually from the 7th of July 2006, when I came over for a holiday to watch the football world cup in Germany. Not September 2006 when we moved over here for good. The chap at the drivers licence counter told me there was nothing he could do, as far as they were concerned I was resident from the 7th of July 2006 and they could not exchange my licence.
I had missed the 5 year deadline by 20 days!
I was angry and annoyed at myself especially as I had the completed forms sitting at home for so long. The guy told me I could write a letter to the head office asking them to give me a break so I'll see how that goes.
One good deed
My drivers licence debacle happened at the beginning of the day, I went to work disappointed and angry with myself. On the way home from work that day, still feeling a bit shit I had an opportunity to do a good deed and thought this would be an opportunity to turn my day around. It went something like this...
The train I was on normally stops at Wimbledon, Earlsfield and Clapham Junction, which is where I get off. The train wasn't too full, I had two seats to myself as did most people in the carriage. I was facing the back.
At a couple of points before reaching Wimbledon the train guard announced that the train would not be stopping at Earlsfied due to signalling problems. When we pulled in to Wimbledon the announcement was made again at which point a lady across the aisle from me, said something very English like, "oh crap", leapt up from her seat and just got out the doors before they closed and the train left. It was a bit of a performance.
Anyway, the train carried on, not stopping at Earlsfield, a bit before we got in to Clapham Junction I noticed there was a wallet or diary on the seat where the lady had jumped up from. As the train pulled in to Clapham I went to the seat (no one was sitting there), picked up the diary/wallet, asked the people around if it was theirs, it wasn't so I decided to take it to hand it in.
Standing on the platform at Clapham I decided to check inside the diary to see if there was a phone number I could call. I noticed at this point that it was a combined diary and wallet, it looked very heavily used and would no doubt be sorely missed by its owner. There was a number and a name. So I called Georgina, there was no answer so I left a message saying I'd found the diary and would either hand it in at Clapham or hang on to it. I tried another number which turned out to be her doctor. I called Jackie for advice, no answer. So I called Georgina back, straight to voicemail, I left a message saying I was going to hang on to the diary and gave my number for her to call.
I got on my next train to Balham, holding this diary awkwardly all the way. As I got out of the train at Balham I had a frantic call from my new friend Georgina, she lived down the road in Tooting and we agreed she would meet me at the Du Cane Court reception. She turned up about 10 minutes later. We did the exchange, she was "much obliged" and off she went.
Thank you Georgina for loosing your diary so I could find it to give back to you so I felt better about myself.
Fantastic Mr Fox
Final story, I'll try and make this short.
For those of you that don't know, wild foxes live in London, you can see them pretty much anywhere, usually at night or around dusk and dawn, they wreak havoc with poorly stored rubbish.
Also, most of you will not be familiar with the Balham odd bods, the beggars, drunks and just generally odd types that you see around Balham. There are no more of these odd bods in Balham than in other places and they're not all over Balham but they are around and you get to know their quirks.
There is one odd bod in particular who is relevant to this story, he is tall, walks very quickly with a backwards lean, almost like he is going to fall over backwards, and he will usually ask for spare change to buy a cup of tea/coke etc. I have on one occasion seen a clever person give him a can of coke rather than the money, as you never know what the money will get spent on.
So on Saturday morning I go for a run, it's about 9:30, I've just left home, running along the high road towards Tooting and there is our odd bod, walking along, arm aloft which is unusual, not one of his normal oddities, and then it hit me. He was holding a dead, slightly emaciated fox aloft, walking along the street.
This is completely inexplicable, I was running so only had a few second to take it in. I saw some people who had spotted this from their balcony come running down to the street to get a closer look but I had just a short time to take it in.
It still baffles me, where did he get the fox from? where was he going with it? what was he going to do with it? was someone going to stop him and point out that all this was very unhygienic, let alone very creepy?
Anyway, this is by far the weirdest thing I've seen in Balham.
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| This is a picture of a man holding a fox. It bears no resemblance to the scene I saw in Balham. |
That's it, story time is over. Sorry for the lack of pictures.
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