Technology is great but only when it works

SWMBO and I are just back from a fabulous week in the sun. Everything about our adventure was perfect – apart from the DART crossing.

I have had a DART account since it was announced they were stopping you from throwing a handful of cash into the basket at the barrier.

It’s ostensibly a good system, using current technology. Every time you cross the Thames via the bridge into Kent or through the tunnel into Essex, your car registration is read electronically and the fee of £2.50 deducted from the credit card details you supplied when registering.

On our return to deepest Suffolk I checked my DART account – our return journey, from Gatwick Airport, was listed as fee paid. But there was no mention of the outward journey ten days earlier.

Must look into that, I said to myself. Then I forgot.

Until yesterday. In amongst our post was an envelope bearing the legend DART Penalty Notice.

It was for our outward journey almost two weeks ago now.

The notice had two fuzzy, but identifiable, photos of my car, complete with full registration.

So, the cameras picked up the car and its reg but did not register the journey with my account.

I rang DART and was told if I paid then the penalty would be cancelled. They could not work out what had happened but sometimes the cameras did not match registrations with accounts. It could have been foggy (it wasn’t), the plate could have been dirty (it wasn’t, as the notice photos clearly showed) etc. etc.

Anyway, they found my account details (very easily) and £2.50 was taken from my credit card.

Why am I boring you with this? Well, one of the current solutions to the Irish border Brexit conundrum is to use technology to check traffic.

Good luck with that.

You're old when a bed costs same as your first house

I don’t usually take much notice of the marketing material that falls out of the daily paper.

This could be viewed as a terrible admission from someone who in a previous life as an editor encouraged inserts because of the revenue they earned our newspaper group.

Now I find them slightly annoying and often provocative. Do I REALLY need that side-panel bath for ease of access (answers on a postcard please)?

But one recent glossy insert caught my attention. It was a 20-page brochure for a furniture firm.

As I flicked through, my eyes settled on a bed. I have to admit that as beds go it was OK. And, most pleasing, the cost had been reduced. From £16,170 to £14,500. Yes, that’s right- a bed for £14,500.

You realise you’re getting old and wrinkly when a bed costs the same as your first marital home. That’s how much we paid for a lovely little three-bedroomed detached house in the middle of commuter-belt Bishop’s Stortford 40 years ago.

My rant earlier this month about PETA and the village called Wool got a response from my reader.

“I entirely agree,” he said. “Every time I put my sprouts into boiling water I ask myself ‘How can I do this to living vegetables? When I could be cooking meat that is long dead.’”

Controversial but at least someone reads my work. Thank you.