Yesterday afternoon I had to go to town, Solothurn, where my doctor has her practice. It was the day of my test to see if I was capapble of driving a car or not. I was busy taking photos on the way, as it was something completely different to my usual supermarket run. The St. Urs cathederal (patron saint) is the first building you see when approaching the town, but afterwards we do a left turn over the bridge towards the main station.

The we do a right turn before the station and arrive at the destination. Mr. Swiss decided as he did not have to take the test, he would leave me to it and dropped me off at the docs with instructions to buy a refill of my Twinings Lady Grey tea when in town. When I arrived I was given an empty plastic cup and directed to the toilet to give up a sample for the state – they really do not take chances. As I was drug free I had no problem, it was because of my diabetes, and it seems I was also sugar free for that sample. Afterwards a blood count of 8,6 sugar was measured, but it seems that was because it was only an hour or two after lunch. “Do I measure it myself?” I was asked. I was honest, only when I feel like it. I added that the price of those plastic bits for measuring was not cheap and whether I measure three times daily or once a week/month, really makes no difference. I only take tablets in any case. It seems that to keep my driving licence I now have to carry my book with all the blood sugar counts with me, in case there is a control and I must measure my blood glucose before I drive the car, so that they have the latest results. This was just the beginning.

The rest was fairly straight forward. I passed the eye test with flying colours. She asked if there is a remark in my driving licence that I have to wear glasses. I did not have a clue, but there was none. I do not think they remarked things when I got my driving licence. Today they are all little plastic cards, mine is still the original crumpled piece of blue paper  with the original photo of 38 year old Mrs. Angloswiss. I even had brown hair at the time. I passed the seeing test with flying colours. I could even read half the card without glasses, but the little print at the bottom was difficult to decipher without glasses whether it was an “e”, “3” or an “8”, but with glasses no problem.

Afterwards was the idiot test by connecting numbers with letters of the alphabet in a certain row, like 1,2,3 and a,b,c. Another success, I should have become a teacher or doctor in my life.  We had a little discussion about the general condition of my physical capabilities. I told her I tend to drag the left leg after half an hours walking – no problem, we have a car with automatic gear changing and I do not need the left foot. The doc did mention that the idea is now that I do drive the car now and again to make sure I do not forget how it works – no problem, I am still thinking about it.

Result is that I keep my driving licence and will be let loose for another two years, when I have to do it all again. Apparently we are the only country that do this idiot test to keep the driving licence, although other countries have other laws.

As we were leaving the town I got a shot across the river of Solothurn. The big building on the left is known as the Landhaus, and is where we have various exhibitions and talks, even political ones. If it had been a clear day, you would have seen the Jura mountains in the background. The big steeple belongs to the Jesuit church.

The remainder of the day was a normal blogging, uploading of photos and reading my book. Today I had breakfast with No. 1 son, withboth of us doing a sort of running buffet thing and getting in each other’s way. I usually have the kitchen to myself for spreading bread with butter and jam, but as he has the same breakfast we were both doing the same thing at the same time with only one pot of jam. It got a little complicated as  we both needed the jam at the same time. He has now left, as  he planned a day in Geneva today. It is a 2 hour train journey from here, but a direct train.

I have a lazy day today, no shopping trips or other excitement. Just a golden oldie with her computer and blogging for lack of anything else to do. See you around, and remember blogging first, blogging first – famous last words?