![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
horse-shoe-nail
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 04:08 pmI badly need a new car. My gallant little Mermaid, who has conveyed me thither and yon for the last five or six years, is finally giving up the ghost. She has sprung a leak on her head gasket, which means she trundles around the show in the midst of a thick fog of exhaust fumes and steam, consuming vast quantities of oil and water, and she's not worth the cost of the major overhaul which would fix things. I can't blame her: she's a '93 vintage, and has done well.
I can afford a new car, or at least a newish second-hand car of more recent vintage. That's not the problem. The problem is that I don't currently have a valid driver's licence, since I was driving off my Zimbabwean one, which was in the wallet which was stolen. I am not going to acquire a newer, more expensive car when driving invalidly, on account of how that mucks with the insurance liability thingies. I need to either procure a new Zim licence, or go through the whole rigmarole of taking my learner's and licence here.
In order to work out if I actually can procure a replacement, I need to extract sense from either the Zim consulate or the Central Vehicle Registry in Harare. Since any email addresses I have found for them bounce, and the phone numbers simply ring ad nauseam, I do not think that sense will be forthcoming any time soon, if in fact it ever existed in above-quantum quantities in either of those organisations.
In order to work out if I can actually re-take my licence when I already have one, I need to extract sense from the traffic department in Cape Town. Currently I am embroiled in a circular pattern of viciously self-referential phone numbers, during which I am passed from person to person like an infinitely-wrapped parcel.
In either to escape from the above holding pattern, I need considerably more energy than I currently possess, given as how I am still chronically fatigued and have just gone through a massive year-end marks-processing embroilment. Right now I manage one and a half phone calls and then burst into tears.
Sometime in the next few weeks the whole thing is going to be taken explosively out of my hands when the Mermaid's engine seizes solid and erupts from the bonnet like an inexpert solid-fuel rocket. At this point we're royally screwed, since the Evil Landlord's car has actually blown a head gasket and is completely defunct, and he's in the middle of a major release and doesn't have time to replace it, leaving me and the Mermaid as the sole transport for the household. (A rather amusing reversal of the usual state of affairs, and one causing me a certain amount of innocent, karma-balancing pleasure).
Send more energy pls. I need to hammer it into the shoes on my horse.
I can afford a new car, or at least a newish second-hand car of more recent vintage. That's not the problem. The problem is that I don't currently have a valid driver's licence, since I was driving off my Zimbabwean one, which was in the wallet which was stolen. I am not going to acquire a newer, more expensive car when driving invalidly, on account of how that mucks with the insurance liability thingies. I need to either procure a new Zim licence, or go through the whole rigmarole of taking my learner's and licence here.
In order to work out if I actually can procure a replacement, I need to extract sense from either the Zim consulate or the Central Vehicle Registry in Harare. Since any email addresses I have found for them bounce, and the phone numbers simply ring ad nauseam, I do not think that sense will be forthcoming any time soon, if in fact it ever existed in above-quantum quantities in either of those organisations.
In order to work out if I can actually re-take my licence when I already have one, I need to extract sense from the traffic department in Cape Town. Currently I am embroiled in a circular pattern of viciously self-referential phone numbers, during which I am passed from person to person like an infinitely-wrapped parcel.
In either to escape from the above holding pattern, I need considerably more energy than I currently possess, given as how I am still chronically fatigued and have just gone through a massive year-end marks-processing embroilment. Right now I manage one and a half phone calls and then burst into tears.
Sometime in the next few weeks the whole thing is going to be taken explosively out of my hands when the Mermaid's engine seizes solid and erupts from the bonnet like an inexpert solid-fuel rocket. At this point we're royally screwed, since the Evil Landlord's car has actually blown a head gasket and is completely defunct, and he's in the middle of a major release and doesn't have time to replace it, leaving me and the Mermaid as the sole transport for the household. (A rather amusing reversal of the usual state of affairs, and one causing me a certain amount of innocent, karma-balancing pleasure).
Send more energy pls. I need to hammer it into the shoes on my horse.
