Thursday 25 March 2010

Wednesday 24th March 2010 - Posting a Letter

          The trunk remains darkly closed.
 
          I found some displacement activity, although it turned out to displace more than I expected.
          I had to post a letter.  I asked Google for the nearest Post Office.  Of course, being Google, it showed me every post office in the universe, and left me to narrow things down a bit.  The one I picked turned out to be the local sorting office.  Dulcie did rather better, and found a real post office next door.
          Where I was faced with a longish queue and an "APC" (Automated Postal Centre?).  I really only wanted to get the correct stamp for whatever weight of letter I had, so, always game for  new experience, I went for the ATC.  Which promptly started an inquisition: of jesuitical proportions.  For example, it wanted to know if my letter was "rigid".  Well, depends, dunnit?   I wouldn't have considered it "rigid", but the USPS might.  The man waiting behind me had no doubt noticed I had one slim letter.  He was becoming agitated.  I was getting much more "experience" than I had bargained for, so I quietly admitted failure and joined the counter queue: quite a few places behind where I would have been if I gone straight there.
           When I got to the counter, there was another inquisition.  I was sending someone a stamped-addressed-envelope, so they could return something.  The letter wasn't sealed, because, well,  the stamped-addressed-envelope still needed its stamp, didn't it?.  The counter clerk wanted to know if I was going to put anything else in the envelope.  Well, I was, wasn't I?  Jacques Tati would have done it much better.  Everyone would have known to laugh.  Instead of getting cross, like they did.  Eventually, I lied my way out of trouble.
 
          Later that night, I finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".  It's very good.
 
         

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