New West

The rush hour here starts at 14.00, so both Kevin and Lori were concerned when I said I was going to be driving to Coquitlam at that time.

Five hours earlier I was given a witch's costume. In the Halloween Howl programme, my job is to meet, greet and seat, introduce the play, fetch the snake from its tank and put it back, clear away the other props as they are used and then wind up the show and let the children into the Haunted House. Doing this dressed as a witch was a good start because as I stepped out of the nature house, the children all squealed.
'Do witches wear Nike?' asked one little boy. I guess they do.

Lori gave me directions that were clearer and as it turned out, simpler and I arrived in Coquitlam in good time. Then I spent about an hour just circling the place, narrowly missing two of the turnings.
Finally I was inside the Driver Services Centre. Only me in line.

'Can I help you?' asked the man behind the counter in a thick, and I mean thick, Russian accent.
'I failed a Road test here and my UK Driving Licence was retained,' said I,
'You failed?' queried Igor,
'Yes, but now I've passed and I'd like to collect my UK licence,'
'You passed?'
'Yes, in Point Grey, they said to come here for my UK licence.'
'UK licence,' he repeated as though tasting the words, 'where is it from?'
'The UK,'
'Ah........Britain,' he said eventually. He went off and I could see him at the back of the office with a cabinet drawer on a counter. He kept looking up at me. The line was now building up behind me. At the next counter, another receptionist was ignoring the queue in favour of phoning a friend.
Igor called a woman over. They both looked at the drawer and looked up at me. Finally he came back.
'Would you like an Italian one?' he joked,
'Does it have my name and picture on?' I lamely joked back. He made a gurgling sound.
The licence was sellotaped inside a yellow envelope, but Igor seemed not to have encountered sticky tape before. He half retrieved it and seemed confused by it. He held up the photocard part and asked if the picture of me were me.
'Yes,' I answered, not wanting to antagonise him with sarcasm while he still held my UK licence in his fat little hand.
He handed it to me,
'You don't drive with this one now,' he said, then he gave me back my BC interim one,
'You drive with this one.' Phew, thank goodness he cleared that one up for me, but did I care, I had my precious back.
'My precious,' I said, but only inside my head.

New West? New Westminster is the city I had to drive through to get to Coquitlam. I get the impression it is thought of as pretty downmarket here, but it didn't seem so bad to me, and there was a development not far from the waterfront that truly reminded me of a European shopping centre.
Provocatively for a people who find 50 kph an impossible speed limit to get down to, that entire part of town had a limit of 30kph and frequent signs to remind you.

And when I got back here and checked the post - there was my brand spanking new permanent BC licence.

You know what I'm going to do now, just for mischief? I'm going to carry both in my bag, and sometimes I'm going to drive on my UK one and not my BC one. I might even change mid journey, who knows, the possibilities are, well maybe not endless, but at least twofold.

Ah, my precious. Any witch would do the same.