UNCOLLECTABLE MAIL (UPDATE)

I sometimes think that I'm just really unlucky when it comes to sorting stuff out.

But then...

After reporting that normality had resumed at our local delivery office, I came home (far too late to make the opening times) the following Wednesday and found another red card waiting upon the doormat.

This time it mentioned two items; A book which I knew was on the way and a letter which needed to be "signed for" and which was probably some time-sensitive and no-doubt utterly vital document or other in relation to the handling of the Estate.

Important stuff, I'm sure.

So, on my way home from work on Thursday, I added the extra five mile round trip to my journey in order to collect these and found, to my dismay, that another notice was in the window of the Post Office telling its customers that it was closed because someone had had to go into hospital.

Again, sympathies, etc… but what was I supposed to do next…?

I went home, ranted away to myself for a bit, and telephoned the Royal Mail and, after listening to two minutes of recordings stating the bleeding obvious, I got through to a very friendly customer services operative who seemed as bewildered as I was about the situation, but who reassured me that they are "Legally bound to deliver the mail" and suggested that I should ring them again "after 8.00am tomorrow" because that's when the mail gets sorted and there's usually someone in the building to answer the phone…

Happily, due to m'colleagues having "half term" issues, I had decided to work from home on the Friday and so I had time to make the call, getting through at about ten past eight (and after having heard all of the bleeding obvious all over again), to another helpful chap who told me that he would ring through to the office itself and call me back to tell me what the plan was.

Naturally, he didn't.

Or…

If he did, it was that "You were called today at 10.23am… The caller left no number" message that I found on the phone later on, not that any kind of actual message had been left along with it, so it probably wasn't actually him but some other cold-calling nonsense of the kind I usually avoid by being at the office.

By now I'd already got twitchy enough about this important document to pass my mid-morning coffee break by leaping into the car and heading back to the office itself, just to see if, by some kind of miracle, it had actually opened again.

As I drove past, I noticed a whole group of people in the doorway, so I pulled up and walked back, only to find that it was rather emphatically closed again. A lady standing hopefully outside shared her understanding of the situation that the official gentlemen of the postal service were inside "sorting things out" and she was waiting on the off-chance that she might be able to get her own parcel as and when and if they opened the place up, although she'd already been told that they would most probably be taking everything back to the main sorting office a couple of towns away.

I decided not to wait and stomped tetchily back to the car and, after I'd turned around and was heading back through the village, saw the gentlemen of which she had spoken lugging sacks of mail back towards their vehicles whilst she explained to other unlucky customers about what she thought was going on.

I arrived home and chunnered to myself about what exactly I was supposed to do, and where exactly my vital documents might actually turn out to be, and when precisely they might be there if I headed over to try and track them down with my red card and my passport clutched hopefully in my tiny hands.

I decided to ring my sister and have another short rant about the problems involved in sorting out the Estate, but, perhaps luckily for both of us, she wasn't in, and so I made myself a cup of coffee instead and headed back to the work face.

Ten minutes later, there came a knocking at the door, and it was our much put-upon regular Postie clutching both my parcel and my vital documents in his hand and looking totally relieved at at least finding somebody at home somewhere.

We had a bit of a chat about the problems the local Office was having, and the difficulties it was causing, and how he couldn't hand the "Special Delivery" parcels intended for my neighbours over to me even if he wanted to, before going on his merry way with my red card back in his possession and a very long day in prospect, whilst I pondered again upon how sensible I'd been to decide to work from home that day.

So, for this time at least, my little problem has sorted itself out, and I am trying very hard to be sympathetic to the obviously serious problems which are besetting out tiny little local Post Office, but it doesn't half make me anxious.