Identity crisis

I have had an Outing.

I did not want an Outing. I had got more than enough to do at home, but we have had a letter from the council telling us that our Criminal Record checks were about to expire.

You are not allowed to drive a taxi if you are a rascal, or at any rate if you are the sort of rascal that the council does not wish to unleash on an unsuspecting travelling public. Quite a few of the drivers have got the swallow tattoos indicating a visit to Her Majesty, and others have, to my certain knowledge, all attended the same Borstal establishment in their youth. I don’t know what they went there for, you are not supposed to be able to be a taxi driver if you are very wicked, so probably it was for non-payment of their TV licences or something, although that might only be women.

It was tiresome that we had to renew these, not least because it costs a hundred quid. You have got to fill in your name and address on a form, along with an awful lot of other stuff that is really none of the council’s business. You have got to provide half a dozen documents proving that you really are yourself, and promise that you do not have a criminal record.

The Gods must have watched over me in my youth, because I do not have a criminal record of any sort.

I have no idea how I managed such magnificent good fortune.

Mark went off to work and I forgot to ask him for his driving licence, so I had to find some other evidence that we were us.

This was not very difficult. There were letters from the mortgage company, our birth certificates, our passports, and our marriage certificate.

I scooped absolutely everything up to take with me. This is because I have met our council before and honestly, they could pick a fight with Mother Theresa. I did not want to get there and discover that I had failed to produce one insignificant but nevertheless utterly vital document, perhaps my password for Amazon or something. I collected every bit of paper I could find.

Readers, this turned out to be a Very Good Thing.

I got to the council and produced the completed forms and the requisite Three Pieces Of Official Paper.

The teenage girl behind the counter scanned them indifferently and told me that they were not sufficient.

I was actually surprised about this, and asked what the problem was.

The problem, it turned out, was our birth certificates.

Please share this information with everybody in South Lakeland, because it is so utterly mindbogglingly brainless that I can hardly believe it myself.

When performing taxi driver identification checks, South Lakeland District Council does not consider that birth certificates over twelve months old are still valid.

This must be really useful for weeding out naughty toddlers.

Obviously I challenged this.

The girl shrugged.

They had expired, she explained. They have got to have been issued within the last twelve months.

Sometimes I can feel steam beginning to bubble up inside me and start to squirt out of my ears.

You do not need me to go into detail about the rant which followed. I was at my patronising middle-class-imitation best. I pointed out that my birth certificate had been more than twelve months old for the last fifty three years, and that nobody else, including the passport office and the driving licence office, had felt that it was inadequate evidence of my existence.

She was immovable.

Finally she was prevailed upon to ring the taxi licensing department, who listened and considered carefully.

It turned out that since I had several other pieces of identification they were moved to make an exception in this case.

I was icily triumphant.

I might not have been at my courteous best at that point.

I had been so irate that it was not until afterwards that I remembered I had forgotten to pay the hundred quid.

I do not want to go back.

I will get Mark to ring up with it in the morning.

Have a picture which is not of the council.