My driver’s licence expired at the end of April this year, but being the good citizen that I am, I went to have it renewed a week or three before the expiry date in the hopes that I wouldn’t be caught out in an embarrassing situation should I ever get pulled over at one of those ‘always there when you least expect it’ police roadblocks.
As it was, I did get pulled over for a routine check one night, but luckily my licence was still in its valid grace period! Now when I went to get the actual licence renewed, I had been quite impressed with the more streamlined procedure that they run at the Awie Kempen testing centre in Bellville (apart from the long queue of course) and with the whole procedure done and dusted, I attempted to ensure that the notification post be sent to my then upcoming change of address here in Gordon’s Bay.
Well, two months have since passed and nary a word from the traffic department, meaning technically I’m an unlicensed driver on the road and just plain looking for kak. Deciding to take matters up into my own hands, I phoned the traffic department (well actually C phoned them) and discovered that my card was indeed already available for collection ages ago!
My next problem sat in collecting it. Seeing as I had had to apply for the card back in Bellville because I was still living there then, meant that I needed to pick it up in Bellville as well, and because God only knows why, all municipal offices close at bloody 15:00, meant that I would somewhere be forced to take off from work a little earlier to make the long drive and get to the centre in time!
Luckily for me, a chance arose on Friday when after a particularly long but successful UCT Web Group meeting finally called it a day, it seemed the chance had arisen to race through to Bellville instead of making my way back up to campus, find parking, set up office and then leave in a minute or two’s time again.
So off I darted in the rain and made the testing station in time, where surprise, surprise, signage lead me straight to the little collections office and I was able to pick up my new card in a matter of about 30 seconds! Funnily enough, it looks like they did indeed post a pickup notification to me sometime ago already, but obviously the bloody thing has got a bit lost in the post because I have yet to see hide nor hair of it!
So now a valid driver on our unsafe roads once more, I celebrated my newly found legality by picking up Ryan and hitting our two favourite shopping spots, Figure Fanatix and BT Games! (Unfortunately both of which turned us away empty handed – which is just as well as June has been a particularly HEAVY month on my wallet!)