Time lapse

Stereotyping gets a bad press! In fact, modern usage of the term seems almost entirely pejorative, with the emphasis on the possibility/probability of negative consequences. This is a considerable distortion of the term’s original connotation as a ‘sense-making’ tool – one which is supposedly judgementally neutral. I must admit to having played my own minuscule part in the assault on this particular gambit by inveighing vigorously and vociferously again same whilst studying psychology in my first year at college back in the early 70s. Needless to say I failed the unit!

Where is this going, you ask? Well – naturally to a cringe-making admission that I now recognise in myself an unfortunate tendency to conform to at least one formerly unacceptable stereotype… that of the grumpy old man!

Can it really be that things are considerably more ‘pants’ (technical term!) than they were 40 years ago, or is it just that the young of all generations are simply immune to the inanities and ludicrosities of life? They presumably have far more important things to worry about than modern systems that don’t work properly, or facilities that appear to have been designed by the inhabitants of an entirely different universe to the one that the rest of us inhabit. Maybe all that us old folks have left in life is the desire and capacity to have a jolly good whinge about things…

Do feel free to disagree at any point!

‘Oh dear’, you say to yourself, ‘this is building up to an anecdote’. Too right!

I posted a few weeks ago on the subject of the nerve-tickling experience of Pearl’s MOT test. Since then I have had to pay her annual road tax – very probably for the last time (sniff!) – and just this last week her insurance fell due. Now – I have owned Pearl for 9 years and have insured her through the same online broker throughout that period. When I first applied for insurance in 2003 I was told that – because she is a soft-top – I would need to fit an immobiliser. This I duly did and everything then went ahead without further hitch.

This time – on receipt of the renewal reminder, a weighty document of a dozen or so pages – I called the broker and asked to renew. We went through the lengthy process on the phone and all seemed to have been settled. A short while later I was emailed the new policy documents – another hefty tome which I, being a Luddite, naturally printed out for posterity.

There was a pause.

Then – after about half an hour – the phone rang. It was my broker. He informed me that the insurers – having already issued the documents – had now discovered that they could find no written record of my ever having installed the immobiliser – nine years previously! Somehow I had had getting on for a decade of perfectly successful insurance – including one small no-fault claim – but was now being told that I couldn’t get cover because they did not have the essential document. Doh! The broker inquired sweetly as to whether I might still have the original receipts and documentation. Honestly!!

Sad thing is – of course – that I had…