Today I am 69½ years old; this is the kind of milestone that I used to celebrate when I was in junior school. Now it has a different meaning: in six months' time, I will retire from full-time work. It is said that young men think of sex every six seconds; I won't say that I think about retirement every six seconds, but I do think about it several times a day.
Ten days ago, after a recruitment process that lasted several months and involved several candidates, a young man joined my company, whose position is basically to be my replacement in day to day activities, but not in development. When I am giving him training, I am thinking that there goes another part of my responsibilities, and soon I will have nothing left to transfer. This is why I frequently think of retirement.
But there is another reason to mark this day. Way back in July last year, I wrote1 As I needed to have my eyes tested (my eyesight has improved somewhat and I reckon that I no longer need to wear glasses when driving), I stopped at the optometrist who is next door to the butcher. He tested my eyes and found that indeed my long distance sight has improved - apparently I have the beginning of a cataract. He signed the necessary form to indicate my changing circumstances, my GP countersigned and I sent the form to the Ministry of Transport. Shortly afterwards, I received by post a temporary driving license that relieves me of the need to wear glasses when driving; the license was valid until 03/02/26 - today. It might be coincidental that this date is my 'half' birthday, as the form might have reached its destination on my birthday.
Since then, I've been waiting for a permanent license to arrive. Eventually I got in touch with the ministry on 15 December; I was told that I needed to have a new photograph taken to be inserted into the license (I could have been told this much earlier). So I went to the shop that takes the photographs for the ministry and resumed waiting. I was told that the new license would arrive in 30 days.
On 22 January, more than 30 days later, I contacted the ministry again and was told that the license has indeed been issued and that it is in the post. I commented that the postal services are bad in Israel and that they should find a better way of delivering - I wouldn't have minded going to the ministry's office in Bet Shemesh and picking up the license there. We get post now only twice a week, yesterday and tomorrow (I mean Mondays and Wednesdays, not in the sense of the Mad Hatter's tea party when it's jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today), and it wasn't in my mailbox today.
So effectively from today I cannot legally drive any vehicle.
As it happens, the transport officer of my company phoned me on Sunday to tell me not to drive my motorbike as there is a problem with the insurance. I told him that I hadn't been driving it recently anyway, due to the cold and rain; I didn't think of it at the time that my license was about to become invalid.
Internal links
[1] 1964
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 545 | The twins came to visit yesterday | Uncle | |
| 672 | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Films, Obituary | |
| 802 | End of an era | Personal | |
| 924 | Problems with blogging | Meta-blogging | |
| 1715 | Once again a new song | Song writing |
