International Driving Permit

I have happy memories of skiing holidays in the 1970s. The pattern was to load up a VW Golf and leave London after work on Friday evening to catch a channel ferry.

Then we’d take it in turns at the wheel and drive all night so that we could be on the slopes on Saturday morning. Once we stayed the night in a friend’s flat in Paris and once in Geneva. Often, on the return journey, we stopped for a slap-up lunch. Once we had a puncture on an autobahn and the slipstream of a big lorry knocked the car off the jack. My resourceful cousin put a few paperbacks in front of the unpunctured wheel and drove his car – a flashy and fast Lancia – up on them so we could reinsert the jack. In the summer there were many Bank Holiday weekend jaunts to France, driving over on a ferry or hovercraft.

All these trips were preceded by getting insurance cover and putting yellow film over the headlamps. So it was with some nostalgia that I went to the Post Office to buy two International Driving Permits (IDPs). They cost £5.50 each and I may never need them, not least because I try to avoid driving abroad.

One permit is governed by the Convention on Road Traffic of 19th September 1949. It is valid for a year and allows the holder of a UK driving licence to drive in these countries: Cyprus, Iceland, Malta and Spain. The Convention on Road Traffic of 8th November 1968 offers much better value. It is valid for three years and covers these countries.

Of course some countries did not ratify either of these Conventions and remain bound by the 1926 Convention on Motor Traffic, namely Iraq, Somalia, Brazil, Liechtenstein and Mexico.

I never expected to make any purchases at Poundland but I was wrong. I bought Dawn Chorus Fat Balls and Wild Bird Woodland Crumble, the latter looks just like a sprinkle for yogurt, because Robert Dyas in Kensington Hight Street is temporarily closed. Both items cost £1 as expected but the checkout man said that a lot of their stock costs as much as £5.