22 May 2012

Births and deaths

Posted in Juggling, Life at 11:32 am by alby

It’s mine (and DB’s) birthday on the 11th May but my birthday was somewhat overshadowed by the birth of little Louie on the 10th this year.  She’s lovely if a little small for a person (about the right size for a newborn though).

This week also saw the death of one of my regular go-to websites.  The IJDb has finally closed after 11 years of life.  I spent more time there than pretty much any other site using its rec.juggling interface for the majority of the time.  I met numerous people online first through its pages and chat room.  Hello to Lisa, Sun, Mini and their mum, Popstar Dave, Greg and more.  I remember meeting Fak and being surprised that she was female.

Hopefully another site comes along to replicate this loss.

Major thanks to Colin and his minions and all who gave the community its colour.  RIP IJDb.

02 May 2012

Bureaucratic mare

Posted in Life, Rants at 10:01 am by alby

Horrendous day of faffing on Monday.

We got a bigger car on Saturday (Zafira) but it was untaxed.  Not only that but previous owner was disabled so we had to go to the DVLA (in Nottingham) to change the tax status of the car. 

They needed a valid MOT certificate (got), the V5 cert (got), and proof of insurance.  Annoyingly the new insurers wouldn’t send a pdf via email so we’d have to wait for one in the post.  Hmm, not a plan with a car with no tax disc sitting on the road.
 
Phone call to insurers. “Oh we’ll fax you a copy”.  As we’re not in the 1990′s we don’t have a fax machine.  “Oh go to the DVLA and ask them to phone us and we’ll fax it through to them”.  Sound idea.
 
So we got  to the DVLA.  “No we can’t get faxes through here.”  So couldn’t tax it.  Grr.  After a think we figured that Ruth’s brother-in-law would have a fax machine.  He did!  So they faxed a certificate through to him.

By this time we didn’t have enough time to get back to the DVLA before I was due to teach a Pilates class in Belper.  So R and J had to stay in Derby while I did that.  I reckoned it would be best if I went straight to Nottingham after my class.  Once there I noticed all the big signs up saying “We don’t accept faxed copies”.  Aargh!

Luckily they’d recently tweaked things to allow faxed copies (but not photocopies apparently).  They also allow pdfs wot have been printed (what’s the difference?)

So eventually the thing gets taxed.  After lots of faff and driving (about 90 miles in all) and stress.

Hint to remember – never buy an untaxed car!