Apologies for the lateness of this post, but I’ve not long got back from Norwich.

“Norwich?  Why have you spent two and a half hours driving to that fair town which once hosted ‘The Quiz Of The Week’ and another two and a half hours driving home again?”, I hear you ask.

Well, I’ll tell you: it was to take eldest and only daughter for her driving test.

Due to a shortage of driving test examiners (many of them left and retrained during Covid times, I’m told, and the numbers have yet to get back to normal), there is nothing available in this area.

Nuffin’.

For the past six-months, she has been signed up to do her test in Norwich (where there seems to be a glut of examiners) in the hope of getting a cancellation a bit nearer to home.

But, no joy.

She even paid for an app that alerts her when a cancellation comes up, but it seems that if you don’t press that Accept button within 30 seconds of it coming through, you lose out to someone else who is quicker off the mark.

And, it’s not just round these parts that people are having trouble booking a driving test. It seems it’s over much of the country – Norwich excepted.

I saw on the news a little while back the tale of a young lad from Reading who booked his test in Glasgow, because he couldn’t get anywhere, any nearer, any time soon. And someone who works with my daughter, dragged herself all the way up to Blackpool, for the same reason.

I don’t know how much is involved in becoming a driving examiner, but as they are in such demand, I would have thought people would be jumping at the chance.

And so, anyway… how did she do?

She passed.

Thank heavens.