Trainstopping

As the littlest person in a family with no car, some of my earliest memories involve holding tightly onto Mummy's hand whilst walking past the buffers at one or other London railway terminus. Those huge gongs with their great pistons were at my eye level, and for years I believed that buffers were the normal way to stop a train. I have no idea when I took on board the concept of brakes.
I was equally utterly convinced that the entire purpose of intermediate stations between termini was so that the train driver could get out and enjoy a cup of tea. I didn't consider how the driver might stop the train without having handy buffers to slam into, nor how quickly he managed to down a cuppa.

That was then. This is now.
I've been on quite a journey this last year, and I hadn't expected to slam into any buffers until tomorrow, but arriving home after work this evening my brakes failed. Completely.

Ever since I returned to UK I have known that I ought to notify the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency of my new address, so I wrote them a letter as soon as I had a legitimate fixed abode. They wrote back instructing me to fill out a form D1 and it was immediately apparent that I needed to jump the Passport name-change hurdle first. I completed that several months ago but haven't followed it up with the driving licence because, well, I don't drive anything more ferocious than a pedal cycle and I rather enjoyed the kudos of having a Greek driving licence, even though it was in a name I no longer use.

But now it appears that it might be handy to use a hire car to drive my colleagues to site visits every once in a while, and so having a licence that doesn't raise eyebrows or questions would be a good thing to have.

No problem at all in filling out the form, and no problem either with enclosing a whole lifetime of certificates giving proof of my name and changes thereto, but kissing goodbye to my Greek licence, sending it off to Deepest Darkest Wales knowing that it is the only piece of ID that will never be returned, was more distressing than I had imagined.

Setting up this photo, however, came as a huge surprise. The image on the Greek licence was taken in 2013 by my then laptop under the pergola over the terrace outside my bedroom, the image I am sending to DVLA for inclusion on my UK license was taken in a booth in a South London shopping mall in 2018.

Some things never change, despite the duration of the journey.