Still without a car, and likely to remain so for some time. So I’m getting in lots of walking. So long as I keep it to a sensible level, it’s not being too hard.
Without a car, shopping is the big problem. There are buses into town from the village, but that’s half a mile away; carrying our weekly shopping all that way is just not doable. There’s a twice-weekly bus service that runs past our door and into Dumfries. That’s useful in that we get picked up and dropped at our door and so we take that sometimes; but walking around town and hauling loads of shopping to the bus stop is nearly as bad as hauling it all up from the village. Besides which, Dumfries has no market and no big supermarket within the the town centre – the bus stops at Tescos, but we refuse to use that.
However, there is a local community bus that does weekly shopping trips into town and goes past our door; we’re going on that tonight. Unfortunately, being only in the evening means it’s not terribly useful if you want to use places like the bank or the library. So we can only use the supermarkets, either the Co-op or Tescos. No doubt about which one we’ll be using, of course.

But at least using the bus is working out cheaper than running a car, now that B has his bus pass. Ill not be able to get one until next year (whee! watch me go then!) and I’m not looking forward to the rigmarole of geting one – they require a photo ID, which I don’t have.
I had a taste of what a freak that makes me just a couple of years back, when I tried to open a bank account in my sole name. The woman in the bank was genuinely taken aback and took several minutes to be persuaded that I really really don’t possess either a passport or a driving license. She then spent about ten minutes asking colleagues what form of ID would be acceptable; in the end, she dug up details of a photo ID scheme that involved getting a GP and a JP to certify that I exist and that I’m not a terorist/money launderer, after which I would have to pay a not inconsiderable sum of money to process the paperwork. So I didn’t bother.
I really hope I won’t have to go through all that again next year – hopefully, since the scheme is for the elderly, who are less likely to have passports/driving licences, the people in the Council office will be a bit more flexible about it than banks are.
That’s why I’m sort-of in favour of an ID card scheme – not the one that’s being proposed, mind, where every offical herbert is going to be able to swipe your card through his machine and get the grimy details of your whole life along with your DNA and fingerprints. What I’d like is just a simple card scheme, the sort where you just have to flash a card that says something like the following:

The Office of the Most Noble Govt. of Her Supreme Maj Queen Liz Deux hereby certifies, testifies, avers, confirms and guarantees that [name here] is whom s/he bloody well says s/he is.
So kindly sod off.
Yr. most humble servant,
H. Illegible-Signature
Assistant Deputy Under-Secretary-in-Waiting (Temp)