Time to tax the car...

[Fiddlesticks]

A reminder popped up on my phone yesterday. Time to tax the Volvo.  Oh well, nothing so certain in life as death and taxes, so they say.

I go online, where the first thing it wants to know is, do you have a reminder letter from the DVLA with a reference number on it. 

 

- I don't.

 

No matter. You can use the number on the owners document. That's if you have it... Cue a complete reorganisation of the home filing system and a minor falling out with Mrs. Fiddlesticks when I put her childhood letter from the Queen on the wrong pile of papers.

 

-I don't have that either.

 

Hmm.

No problem.  You can just use the new keeper Green Slip,  which of course will have been given to you when you bought the car last August.

 

- I think you can see where this is going...

 

Now this situation is starting to interfere with my ordinarily calm and peaceable demeanour. Despite my momentary lapse a minute ago in the case of Regina vs. Fiddlesticks, I am usually meticulous when it comes to record-keeping. 

 

- Question everything.

 

Well, maybe not everything - there is,  after all,  a big ugly Swedish station wagon sitting on the drive. But the heretical imperative suggests that we should always allow our underlying presuppositions about the universe to be challenged. Coupled with the words of Sherlock Holmes - when you have eliminated the possible, etcetera... I begin to ask myself whether, in fact, this was a snafu perpetrated not by myself, but 12 months ago by a certain salesman who lacked a keen eye for the details.

 

Did we ever have the V5C, or in old money, the log book?

 

The more I thought about it, the more I was sure we had not.  Although the dealer had taxed the car at time of sale, somehow someone else had been collecting my parking fines and speeding tickets for the past 12 months.  Well, lucky them.

 

The multi-layered telephone menu system at the DVLA connected me to a young lady who confirmed my hypothesis in the most delightful Welsh accent.  You say Swansea Joke Factory, I say Smooth FM.

 

There was only one thing left to do.  I had to choose between paying £25 and requesting a new Log Book at the Post Office with a V62 form, or I could call the aforementioned sales guy and try to get this whole mess straightened out.

 

My inner Yorkshireman took over. I'm not spending money where I don't have to. I placed the call.

"Oh yes", he said, "for some reason it's not registered to you"... Before I could invoke Shelock in reply, he started punching details into his keyboard to rectify a year-long wrong.  Registration... Tax...

 

The inner Yorkshireman flew once more into action.

 

"Whoa.. before you do this, it's the 27th today. I don't want to be buying 11 months' worth of tax for the price of 12."

 

"Oh", he said. "You're right. If I do it today you'll be charged from the first of this month. Best to call back on Monday. We'll fix it then."

 

And with that, all was well with the world once again. The filing system was fixed.  Mrs. Fiddlesticks was no longer worried about being arrested for tax evasion as she pinged the ANPR cameras in the Mersey Tunnels. And I could make a start on a mountain of shredding. Turns out, I keep far too many useless and random bits of paper.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Fiddlesticks