My passport and driving licence sat on the counter but the girl stared back at me, repeating her demand.
‘I need your DVLA check code,’ she said. I told her I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was on about. ‘I need your DVLA check code,’ she said again, doing her best ‘computer says no’ stare.
The Sixt rental office was in the atrium of the Hilton Hotel Gatwick, which for some reason had been heated to something like sauna temperature. I had walked what felt like a mile, pulling my wheelie suitcase, because Sixt wasn’t in the main car-hire area near the terminal exit, and hadn’t warned me very enthusiastically either, during the booking process, that it was going to be the other side of the multi-storey car park, down a walkway tunnel, and all the way to the far side of the hothouse atrium of the Hilton.
When I finally found the office, there were two staff members standing outside. ‘Are you going to come in and serve me?’ I asked them as they continued to stand outside chatting after I walked through the door to find the office empty. They both then came inside, finding a man already sitting waiting.
The girl said very pointedly that she would serve me. She was nice, but she was very, very nice, in that way people have when they want to put you in your place for being impertinent.
I was sweating from the walking and the sauna-like heat as she kept saying: ‘I need your DVLA check code.’
‘Listen to me,’ I said, after she had said it so many times I felt like I was going to faint from the sweating and the confusion.
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