Abstract From Nature

...straight out of the camera.

Upsetting news from our friends in Oregon resulted in a bad night's sleep and a bad dream involving the loss of my phone when I needed it to tell John which London Underground station to meet me in. I have a lot of dreams involving either the loss of my phone or being lost myself and unnable to make my way back. I'm sure this is very significant, but I'm too tired to think about it...

I spent half the morning working my way through a list of things I need to track down. The saga of the Navy pea coat continues with quite a prompt response to my query. The packing slip on the returned coat was misplaced and the warehouse didn't know who the item belonged to. The replacement coat has been ordered.

The saga of the missing driving license is much more frustrating, involving an aborted phone call when I was unable to explain my problem to a robot named MIles. I gave up on him and waited for an hour and a half for a real human to return my call. At least she sounded like a real human but wasn't much help. She confirmed that the license had been renewed but referred me to another phone number for  the 'error processing unit' for a mailing date. After trolling through that list and pressing buttons assuring them that I wasn't trying to reinstate a suspended license, I finally settled on what appeared to be the right department. After waiting on hold there I was told, 'due to Covid 19 we are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls. Please hang up and try again later go away' I gave up. I did make an appointment to go in person but if my license is already renewed I'm afraid a new series of unfortunate events and complications will be unleashed. The humans have to deal with so many people and their problems every day that they're not always much better than Miles....

Maybe I'll have the energy to call back the Error Processing Unit  tomorrow. What are the odds that they are still experiencing a high volume of calls?

If I get pulled over after the expiration date on my current license I'll just have to explain all this to the officer. Maybe he can get through to the Error Processing Unit.