boris has caught up with me

A very long time ago, I left London before 8:30 one weekday morning before Westminster's delightful traffic wardens could take lots of photographs of my car and give me a ticket before calling the clampers. I forgot to pay the congestion charge.

A few days later, I signed onto tfl and attempted to pay it. Couldn't. Stupid system won't let you pay it online after the second day unless you have the penalty notice number. Since I hadn't been home, I didn't have the number and couldn't pay it.

OK, get home, no penalty notice. Odd. Maybe I got away with it, however unlikely that might seem. It wasn't top of my priority list, ever. By the time I'd remembered that I was supposed to have sent off the registration doc for the red devil (which wasn't till I had to tax it) I'd forgotten all about it.

Once in a while, I'd twitch a bit thinking it must have been sent to T's old address, and each time decided I would let the canines continue to snore. Well, yesterday, T called me, very worried that she was going to ruin my day. She'd had all the mail from the old place forwarded and found a congestion charge penalty notice addressed to her, and the cost of having a drink or several that night is now an extra £180. Grit! Oh well, my own fault and I suppose I can try to convince them their system sucks and let me pay the lesser amount. Wish me luck.

The good news is there were no letters about roadside snapshots so the devil lives on to eat more open road; better than that, it's getting warmer and I can zoom about with the top down

The bad news is that some vermin were throwing stones at her window, and when she went out to see what was what found the rear screen of her car broken. Wish HER luck! Once those darling 'kids' start they sometimes decide it's a good plan to continue. A police officer asked me once, while "investigating" a winter break in at the caravan I used to have in Wales, "have you been a victim before", as if it was MY fault: I doubt much has changed.

Oh, and I've forgotten my login for tfl, but maybe I didn't have one till I got the oyster autofeed set up last week, I resent having to give my email, telephone, address etc details to every bureaucracy that has a website.