Back to Sligo

On Weds18^th we are all off to Sligo and the Vehicle Registration office. The VRT people have FINALLY found the code for 1986 2CVs on their hamster-wheel driven Amstrad computer after 3 days short of 2 months and invited Dad back the 1 hour drive to come sign for it. Dad reports that the lady almost needed a slap anyway because she suggested Dad’s hard won exemption from Import Duty might have run out in the intervening time. Spit. Last time (May 21st!) we were up we were diverted off the proper road by a collapsed bridge and found a superb scenic route through the hills, past crags and caves, picturesque villages and post card Irish cottages and dry stone walls. No such luck this time. We took the camera but failed to re-find the route. After the drive we looked on the map and now know where we should have gone, but that’s not a lot of good to us now.

Other than that there was more Kittens-are-family 'therapy' for me and more free ranging fun for chooks but now excluded from Mum’s raised beds. A soul-food supper of bangers, beans, mash, and fried onions is cooked by Dad. Of course, I get the spare sausage.

On the Thursday Roscommon is given a day off from the rain and it is pure pleasure when wrangling chickens or bunnies , not to be kicking through calf-high (if you are human, nose high to me!) saturated grass, skipping round puddles or squelching into muddy dips in the grass you had not seen. 

For Dad, a chance then to break out the chain saw and 'log' up the big 15 foot lengths of wooden beams from the former hay-barn. This made an impressive contribution to filling the log-store but also wore out his wrists and arms. He didn't know you could get RSI from a chain saw. It must be the weight and hefting what is basically a small petrol engine around at bizarre angles. Not to mention chucking the logs around.

In Dog-meets-kittens therapy sessions we get braver, now giving kittens the run of the house while I am supervised and held on the lead, still allowed to approach and sniff but not to actually kill them. Mum and Dad think (hope?) it's working. They praise me up mightily and give me sweeties when I don’t attack them but they are still nowhere near to trusting me enough to let me off the lead. Sometimes they think they are battling to overcome hundreds of years of breeding terriers to exterminate small animals. They could be right. There is talk of the moment of truth perhaps coming on Tuesday 24^th. Not the Monday. There is a sneaking superstition that ‘animals die on Mondays’ after what happened to Coco and Haggis.

In chicken-land, one of the 'hins' decides to go broody out in the nettle patch in our East field, making herself a nice nest in dense cover. We'd have never found her but for William the Conqueror deciding to stand guard and crow occasionally. Good camouflage, William. Very 'covert'! Cock-a doodle-DOOOOOOO!!!!!!! She's not in this clump of nettles! Honest!

Vehicular Admin

I think we've mentioned before the fun and games we are having trying to import our two remaining cars into Ireland. This process seems to go through 4 or five stages and takes weeks if not months.

First stage was to start the legal process but to avoid having to pay Vehicle Registration Duty (V.R.T.). VRT is due on all cars which Ireland decides are 'new' and is anxious to get their slice of any moneys you might make by importing cars and selling them on, so to avoid paying it, you must prove that it's your car, for your use, which you genuinely owned prior to moving to Ireland, brought with you, still own and intend to continue to own and not sell on.

This involves a 7 page form for each car and to the form must be attached "EVIDENCE" proving each stage. You must first prove the car exists as an item (so, UK registration paperwork, chassis number, engine number, details of make, model, engine size, emissions etc). You must prove you owned it (invoices at purchase, car loan paperwork) and lived in UK (proofs of address, bank statements showing regular 'life' - shopping at Tesco, paying vet bills or school fees, subscribing to clubs, paying utility bills etc). You must then prove you properly moved (removal invoices, ferry tickets) and that you shut down that home and moved out (Utility bill closing accounts, final bills, change of address paperwork, rebates on unused insurance etc). You must prove you arrived and now live here (more Utility bills, setting up services to your new home, like broad-band, water, electricity, phone plus proof of 'life' here (more shopping, subscriptions, vet bills and local fees, not so easy when you've only just moved in). On the strength of that wad of paper (one wad for Mum and the Fiat Panda, one for Dad and the 2CV) you obtain a small slip of paper (per car) from the Revenue which is your exemption from paying VRT.

You can now make an appointment at a nearby VRT (Car Registration) Office which is 'round the back' of your nearby car testing station (National Car Test or NCT, which is the local equivalent to the MOT in England). This was the stage where we had to drive to Sligo through all that lovely scenery, which I think I have covered in an earlier post. Here Mum managed to get through 2 paperwork stages (including more proof of ID and proffering your exemption paperwork) and scored a new registration for the Fiat. The 2CV falls over at this point as it is 'a classic' (which translates as "the lady was unable to find a code for 1986 2CV on the system and had to refer the problem up to higher authority".) She (Clara Bow) has got no further. At 7th June she is now 7 days out of UK tax and UK insurance so Dad has had to take her off the road for now. We await word from Sligo VRT. Meanwhile, the story continues with just the Fiat Panda.

Note that to drive legally in Ireland, you should display in your windscreen a 3-pocket version of the UK 'tax disc holder', and the three pockets should display your tax disc, your proof of insurance and your proof of passing an NCT test. At this stage we have none of these and do not even have the three pocket holder, just our good old UK tax discs.

We try to pay road tax on the Fiat but the website process demands an insurance policy number so we back out. We contact FBD insurance (who insure our house) and find (tadaaaa!) that they are able to set up insurance even in the fluid state of semi-legal cars on UK plates, so we insure both cars. We need letters from the two UK insurers to verify our no-claims but both Direct Line (the Fiat) and Footman James (2CV) oblige. Direct Line can't cope with posting the proof to us here because their computer system DEMANDS a post code and Ireland doesn't have post codes. We have to get the letters sent to Pud Lady in Hastings (UK) and posted on by Tom (Thanks Tom!). The insurance for the 3-pocket holder will proudly say the UK registration numbers, but we can get that changed easily enough).

With Irish Insurance policies, we can now proceed to road tax (Fiat Only, we still have not Irish Reg for the 2CV). With an Irish reg number for the Fiat we can bimble round to our local garage and get Irish number plates made up and then book the car into its NCT test. Our local station (Castlerea) cannot do us till June 12th, so we hunt around and find that the one in Carrick on Shannon can do Sat 2nd June. We get the garage to do a 'pre-test' (which is free but on the nod-and-a-wink understanding that you bring the car to them for any work needed). They find 'borderline' front tyres and ball joints but advise us it's worth a punt. Needing to use Carrick turns out to be a bonus because Carrick turns out to be not only a lovely river side boating town, but also has a wealth of shops which we should probably go have a good look round. Very picturesque. Lots of people in deck-shoes!

The Fiat unfortunately fails, as feared, on the tyres and ball joints, so is now booked back into the garage for that work, but should then be OK to get retested within 28 days and we may soon have one legal car! More on the 2CV when there is something to report. I fear we may be a while!

Deefs