Samuel, our eldest, turns 18 in a couple of weeks' time. This has meant dinnertime conversation about cars (it looks like he'll inherit my grey Conquest, bought in 1994, a veritable chick magnet) and the practicalities of licenses and tests.

 In order for him to register to write his learner's test, we barrelled along to our local licensing office one recent Monday afternoon and found exactly what we expected to find: a kind of official bureaucratic sadness that seems so generic that you can probably buy it off the shelf in aerosol form.

Which is not to say that Sam's application wasn't processed speedily and his eyes grudgingly tested. Everything on that front was fine. It's just that everything was so over-used, and so excruciatingly unloved. Even the water-cooler seemed wrapped in a thin film of melancholy; many of the (handwritten) signs were mis-spelled. The light was poor and the stuffing bubbled out of the old government issue chairs exactly where you'd expect. It almost seemed as though we were on a set for a stage play called "Licensing Department" although, of course, we weren't, it just felt like it.

Sam is a sensitive soul and he would have noticed some of this, although perhaps not with the same degree of middle-age weariness that I did. It was possible, I think now as I'm writing, that his experience at the licensing office might have cured him of the desire to drive for life. He would become a walker, walking everywhere and catching taxis and public transport. Except that a car, even a battered Conquest, is a synonym for independence. And independence is worth enduring sadness and - even - tests for, particularly if you are in matric and on the cusp of your 18th birthday.

Licensing departments are frequently confusing, and once we'd overcome our initial hesitation, we joined a winding line. What happens is that you find a chair and sit at the end of the queue and as the queue inches forward you move progressively closer to the front by chair hopping.

This is the time when, to avoid eye contact and aimless chit chat, people suddenly start texting relatives they hardly know; if they aren't texting they're looking at their cellphones with the kind of ardour which suggests growing spiritual panic.

There were two Indian youngsters in our line, all cheap bling and gelled mohicans, and they were accompanied by their mom. She kept dropping deliciously fat kisses on their cheeks. I would have expected them to be disgusted by such obvious displays of physical affection in public but they lapped up her kisses with a kind of good-natured offhandedness.

These guys are so bathed in love I'm sure they'll pass their learner's first time.

Sam and I eventually got to the front of the line. A big clerk in a maroon satin blouse barked at him and he quivered forwards.

"Learner's," she shouted and he was on his own. I quietly disappeared outside, taking up a position on a wall, near the dustbins, watching the folk around me with the same empty eyes with which they were watching me. Quicker than expected Sam came back; we then queued to pay for his test and the doors behind us were closed because it was three o'clock.

I momentarily feared we would be trapped in there, with the sad furniture and the serial mis-spellers, alone with each other and our cellphones, waiting for the queue to inch forward...