After running all the errands I could to help my parents, a letter from West Midlands Police arrived. They were throwing the book at us because I’d been caught doing 40mph in a 30 in my parents’ car.
The photo evidence showed their little silver Peugeot being driven by me on a dual carriageway in Coventry. A dual carriageway. In what world would anyone think they should be driving slower than 40 on a dual carriageway?
I was bringing the car back from its MOT, having been asked to please sort this out by my father as one of a mountain of things he had let pile up since becoming progressively sicker over the past few months, and then having a stroke.
For days on end I waded through the backlog, filling out forms, meeting with carers, dealing with a leak from a loo with a broken valve which meant water was coming through the ceiling. And then one day, I got in their car and took it for its MOT.
I got an Uber back. Then I got another Uber to pick it up, and when I drove it back I crawled along as the clutch just about held out (although the MOT didn’t seem to care) because my father has driven it in first gear for so long, being so weak he can barely change gear.
At least since the stroke he will finally be prevented from driving. I’ve told him and told him to stop and he always gets cross and refuses. I even rang his GP and she said she would tell him. He said ‘Yes dear, of course’ and then kept driving. There ought to be a way, I told the GP, of her notifying the DVLA that this chap has nothing going for him as a driver, but she insisted she could not.
A few days after the MOT, I was wading through another mountain of paperwork, with no power of attorney I might add, because my father hasn’t given it to me.
Charities… charities… one again inviting them to sign Do Not Resuscitate papers. ‘Vultures… swindlers…,’ I said to myself as I went through the letters, and then I came to the one from West Midlands Police.
It was addressed to my mother, because the car is registered to her. They were going to take her to court and fine her £1,000, give her six penalty points, or a disqualification, it said. Although they wouldn’t if she signed the form overleaf.
I suppose it will be three points or a driver awareness course. But that doesn’t stop the cops having their fun, frightening people, including two oldies with dementia. The letter scared my 84-year-old mother half to death very successfully when my father, slowly, falteringly, using a magnifying glass, read it out to her. My father, who is 88, stared and stared at it and I had to explain it to him, because he can’t understand much since his stroke.
‘You must respond to this notice and not pass it to anyone else,’ the letter stated. So they were frightened even to let me read it for them, and he took it tightly in his hands and wouldn’t let go as I tried to wrest it back. It said they could go online, but that only confused them more.
Eventually, my father was happy that I was the culprit and I would take the points. A part of me felt hurt that he didn’t say: ‘Oh dear, love, and you were doing us such a favour.’
Not a bit of it, but that is because he’s not the father I knew. He’s a new person, and so is my mother. I don’t know them any more. But I can help them, so I do. And no good turn goes unpunished when it comes to the British state.
‘Dear God, I’m glad we don’t live in the UK any more,’ I said to the builder boyfriend when he was consoling me on the phone, because I’d taken my own car I’d driven from Ireland for an MOT the day after that, same route, and maybe they did me for that one too.
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I showed my mother where to sign and tick the box saying: ‘I own the car but was not driving it at the time.’ I filled in my details as the driver, and put it in an envelope to be posted. I didn’t have a stamp.
I told my dad not to touch it, just wait for the carer to go in the next day, after I had gone back to Ireland, and she would bring a stamp and post the letter.
The next day, back in West Cork, I got a call from my father. He was standing outside the Co-op where the postbox is. He had forgotten not to go out to try to post the letter.
It was unclear whether it had been stamped, because he was nearly in tears (I suppose I will be up in Coventry Magistrates’ soon). He had been so worried about the letter that he had gone out to post it, and had then lost my mother. I hope West Midlands Police are pleased with themselves.
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