I am an unusually non-violent person. I tend to let spiders out of doors and open windows for flies. But today I could have killed an entire government department, or at least given someone a rather large smack in the face.

As I can’t attribute the blame to any particular person, an imaginary knuckle sandwich will be applied to the entire DSA, or as you may more likely know it, the people who organise your driving licence.

With Friday being my driving test, I have made sure that I’ve taken plenty of lessons and gotten to know the test area over the past few weeks – Lower Gornal. In fact, I’ve spent a few hundred pounds doing so.

So you might imagine my delight when I peeled open an envelope this morning to find that the nice people at the DSA, with two days to spare, have ‘cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances’ and rebooked me in for 16th April.

Their wisdom prevails three-fold. Firstly, the new date is over a month away. Hurrah for thinking when I got on the beginning of the waiting list after Christmas that I might have to only wait 6 weeks for a slot, but alas I now discover once you get to your point in the queue, they don’t mind sending you to the back.

Their second masterful stroke was reorganising it for slap-bang in the middle of my India trip. Now, I’m usually optimistic, but getting back from Kathmandu to complete a driving test on a Monday morning is pushing at the realms what is physically possibility in my opinion.

Finally, I was angling that I might have is the ability to take up someone else’s cancellation. After checking all the available times, I found that there are no available time slots before I go travelling, and the test centre aren’t in the habit of letting you know when one becomes available. Therefore I am overwhelmingly pleased to announce that I can’t even get a test at the original test centre, and now to make sure I have a stab before I go, I will be doing my run in Kidderminster. A few hundred more pounds to get to know a new area and will everything will eventually be sorted.

I vented some of my frustration today by cutting down a 40ft tree in the garden. If you work at the DSA, I suggest you stay at arms length from me for the next two weeks until I have had enough time to calm down properly.

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Frustration might be one word that springs to mind when thinking about how today turned out. Instead of making headway with work as I had intended (with a brief break to pick up my Indian Visa), the whole thing was ‘flip reversed’ to use colloquial ‘street-speak’.

I had hoped a mid-morning excursion into the Jewellery Quarter would mean I could nip in and out (maybe with a small queue) then come back to send off some work to print and get my teeth into some other bundles of work. Unfortunately after my 30 minute drive in, and a another 30 minute wait I finally got to the front of the queue where the lady behind the counter dissappeared with my tombola ticket and came back five minutes later to let me know it hadn’t been done yet. I wasn’t a happy bunny.

After being told to return at 3pm (when the consulate reopens after lunch) I decided a head start was in order, and at 2.30pm got into the queue behind the other 30 people. At 3pm they let us in and we streamed in in crocodile fashion like a rather bloated Chinese dragon, only to discover at this point that the doors had been open the whole time and the queue actually had extended up the stairs to the top floor meaning there were at least another 30 people in the queue ahead of us.

Thankfully sanity came from conversation with the people around and for the next hour and a half we talked about travel, the fantastic experience we were all having and making suggestions about ways to improve the system. And just to assure you that this wasn’t just a load of pallid Britons moaning, the Indians in the queue were just as irritated, including the blokes in front and behind me who had both sent in postal applications then discover their passports had ‘gone missing’.

The system had many faults, but it’s best by far was the lack of complaints procedure. See, not only were there long delays, but also after lunch half the staff go home and then only a solitary window is left open to deal with all visa requests. There were at least 300 people in the queue by the time I left, and with only half an hour left until closing time (and that means the shutter comes down and you have no choice but to go home). That means only 80 would have had their application processed today. There are no other staff on hand to deal with enquiries, take suggestions or advise that you aren’t likely to get served today, which means that you just have to wait and put up with it like everyone else. It’s that that makes the experience complete.

Such was the build up and my genuine fear for just over an hour that I would be back there tomorrow that I felt genuinely ecstatic when the girl passed me back my complete visa with all my names had been spelt right and they’d even taken the time to stick it in the right way.

In truth, the waiting didn’t bother me. Nor did the long queues. Nor did it trouble me the number of journeys. I’ve met some interesting people and had some good conversations, just one thing still really bugs me, and that is that I have lost two full days work. My advice to anyone else self-employed trying to get an Indian visa in Brum – just pay an agency to do it for you.

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I’m currently working for a small business who are building their first web presence, a simple piece of brochure-ware, so nothing fancy, quite a small job.

As anyone familiar with this will know, buying your own domain is usually a pain free, inexpensive experience, but I have just discovered how badly one firm is behaving and I am really annoyed for the client’s sake.

Firstly, when I got the information about the domain from the client (he had already bought it) he told me that he only had a certificate of ownership and no username or password to make changes. Originally I thought he must have mislaid it, but after checking the registrar out via Nominet, I found they don’t operate a web based control panel, they only have an 0870 number. I emailed them but had no response, so called today and told them I was acting on behalf of a client. With no security or confirmation of my client’s name (just the name of the domain) they changed the nameservers across to mine.

I was intrigued by this lack of security, and asked how much they charged for hosting/domain purchase. The guy told me that they don’t offer any hosting service at the moment, but to register a .co.uk name for two years (as my client had done) costs £88.33. I repeated it back to them, “So, £18.33 for two years then, yes?” and the reply came back, “No, £88.33 for two years.”

It turns out they had cold called my client and sold him the name he wanted.

Cowboys or what?

(Pending project completion I will name the offending company.)

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