The Nudge Unit

I forgot to pay my car tax.
It isn’t the first time,
but with one thing and another,
well, you know how it is.
The letter they sent me,
well, it looked like any other,
addressed to me, Joe Bloggs.
A polite reminder.

But it slipped my mind again.
Buried under a pile of stuff,
it was out of sight.
You know how it happens.
But then they wrote to me again,
this time, with a big headline,
you couldn’t miss it,
‘Pay your tax or lose your Ford Fiesta.’

And there was a photo of my car,
my old car that I love,
underneath the headline.
Well, as you can imagine,
I kind of took notice.
I mean, that letter talked to me.
Not just anybody. Me.
It was addressed directly to me . . .

So I paid up. Went straight
to the Post Office and paid up.
And I wasn’t sure why.
But I kind of felt uncomfortable
about the letter.
It kind of felt, I don’t know,
intrusive? Weird? I mean,
who took the photo of my car?
When? What was I doing?
I felt a bit uneasy about it.

So I went on driving.
Tax disc all sorted. All alright.
And I put to the back of my mind
that strange letter they sent
with my photo in it.
It was only, well, months later,
that I was in the pub,
and I got chatting to somebody.
They used to work for the DVLA,
that kind of thing.

They said that, in my area,
at the time I forgot to pay my car tax,
the government, I don’t know,
some scientist it was,
did a kind of experiment
with the way they wrote the letters,
trying to get us to pay up.
Especially people like me who,
well, forgot more than once.

The person I was speaking to,
said they’re called the ‘Nudge Unit.’
You know, they kind of
give you a nudge
if you don’t pay things.
Saves the government millions.
Apparently, they text people who
don’t pay court fines.
Works better than a letter . . .
Well, it worked on me.
I’m not breaking the law now . . .

© Cath Davies 2015

Cath Davies lives and writes in North Wales. She has worked in social care for many years. Currently, she is currently studying creative writing at degree level at the Open College of the Arts where she has been a student since 2008.